INTEGON Focus Areas

INTEGON scholars collaborate in four research focus areas within the institute:

Texts and transmissions

In this focus area we integrate analyses of texts, modes of transmission and textual practices with regard to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We pay special attention to the interaction of texts and contexts and the constant re-interpretation of authoritative traditions in relation to their institutional embedding and other cultural developments.

Media, arts, aesthetics

In this focus area we investigate the way religion features in literature and popular culture, and address wider questions regarding both the adoption of media into religious traditions and that of religious ideas into (popular) media products. Special attention is paid to aesthetics, understood in a broad sense of sensorial engagement with cultural or religious forms. While the emphasis of this focus area lies on religious imaginaries, we also pay attention to the ways in which imaginaries translate into religious and secular institutions and are embodied as personal or collective identities.

Christian and Islamic movements in past and present

Bringing together phenomena such as Pentecostalism, contemporary migrant churches, and Islamic movements in traditional Muslim societies as well as in the Netherlands today under the umbrella of religious movements allows for sustained comparison. We study these movements by scrutinizing the intertwining of religious imaginaries, the ways in which they feed into, as well as stand in tension to (religious) institutions and become central to believers’ identities and ways of being and moving about in the world.

Religion in the public sphere

Exploring discussions about the presence and contestation of religions in the public sphere, we engage with issues regarding the (trans)formation of religion(s) in contexts of religious pluralism and (post)secularism. We pay particular attention to the transformative effect of religious imaginaries with regard to formal and informal social institutions such as moral and political rules, schools and hospitals, and the function of such institutions for ideals of citizenship, well-being, and social interaction.