Dear colleagues,

please consider the opportunity to present your ethnographic research on Christianity in diaspora:

European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) 2016 Conference ‘Relocating Religion’

28 June – 1 July 2016, Helsinki

CALL FOR INDIVIDUAL PAPERS for OPEN SESSION on:

Christianity in diaspora: Ethnographic case studies of religious practice and identity construction

The session will use the concept of diaspora – broadly defined both in relation to the transnational and in-country movement of groups of people – in order to explore the practice and experience of Christianity in different socio-cultural settings as communities of people relocate to areas outside their ‘homelands’. The session invites ethnographic papers discussing, but not exclusively, questions such as: What role does Christianity and its institutions play in community-building, community empowerment and community welfare in diaspora settings? How are churches constituted and organised in diaspora? How do churches mediate relations and negotiate cultural differences with (non-Christian) host populations? To what extent are Christian churches involved in facilitating integration with/separation from host societies? What relations do diasporic Christians maintain with their ‘homelands’? How does Christianity shape diasporic identities? How is Christian practice/theology (re)shaped by the diasporic experience? By exploring diasporic forms of Christianity across the world, the session will open up understanding of the diversity of Christian identities, practices, theologies and ways of engaging with and explaining the world among diasporic communities, and the theoretical potentiality inherent in this.

Session conveners:

Iliyana Angelova (University of Oxford)

Ksenia Medvedeva (National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia)

In order to submit an abstract for this open session, please follow the link

https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/65198/lomake.html and the submission instructions.

Submission deadline: 31 December

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Best regards,

Ksenia Medvedeva

Faculty of Sociology, Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

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