June 3, 2016 Dear Friend of BCSR, 2015-16 has been an extraordinary year for the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion. We’d like to give you a sense of our activities, current and future, and thank you for helping to make our year such a success. The biggest news came in April 2015, when we were notified that BCSR …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) has awarded summer grants in support of two exciting and innovative graduate student research projects. This year’s recipients were drawn from a very competitive pool of promising proposals received from an open call to UC Berkeley graduate students. Melissa Cradic is a Ph.D. candidate in Ancient History & Mediterranean Archaeology. She …
Lene Kofoed joins BCSR as a visiting student researcher through October, 2016. She is a graduate student in the department of Sociology of Religion, University of Copenhagen. After many years working as a publishing editor in education, she is now writing a master’s thesis on religious education in Danish publish schools. Based on field research with teachers, it examines viewpoints …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) is offering up to four grants in the amount of $5,000 each for graduate students in their second year of study in 2016-17. New Directions grants are provided by BCSR through the Public Theology Program, a critical three-year research initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Grantees participate in a cohort …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) is offering two summer research grants in the amount of $5,000 each for advanced graduate students working on topics in the study of religion, broadly construed. Applications are welcome from all UC Berkeley Ph.D. students who have advanced to candidacy, with preference given to those who are close to completion of …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) is offering up to four grants in the amount of $5,000 each for graduate students in their first year of study in 2016-17. Grantees participate in a cohort of early-career students from diverse disciplines that explores new directions for the study of religion in the public university. Nominations of incoming students …
What should a conversation about religion look like in a public university? How should a public university foster deeper engagements with the historical and contemporary aspects of religious traditions? How can a public university help students and future leaders understand the changing dynamics of religious and secular life? These are just some of the questions that form the research mission …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) announces a postdoctoral fellowship as part of its Public Theology Program. For the academic years 2016-17 and 2017-18, BCSR seeks a top early career scholar to come to Berkeley for one year. The fellowship is dedicated to the furtherance of the very best new scholarship, and in particular the development of …
BCSR is pleased to announce its 2015-16 program of public lectures and events. Scholars and artists from a wide range of backgrounds will address diverse topics in religion, from the lives of cloistered nuns in New Jersey, to fifteenth-century Persian painting, to the role of Christians in the articulation of religious identity in the Mongol Empire. The annual Berkeley Lecture …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion has received a $1 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to fund the three-year Berkeley Public Theology Program. For the offical announcement, click here. Please continue to check the BCSR website in the coming months for more information on forthcoming programs funded by this grant.
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR), an academic center for independent and innovative research in religion, announces the twelve recipients of the 2015 Graduate Student Summer Research Grants. These projects explore a rich variety of topics in religion, from transnational Sufi practices to Puritan theology to the influence of religion on post-war military operations. The twelve recipients …
The Politics of Religious Freedom (PRF) website is a resource for scholars, students, and practitioners across disciplines interested in research and pedagogy at the intersection of religion, law, and politics. The PRF project was established in 2010 to study the legal and political contestation surrounding religious freedom and the rights of religious minorities in Europe, the United States, the Middle …
BCSR’s Graduate Student Event Grants support innovative proposals for graduate student-led lectures, seminars, and conferences for public and campus audiences. BCSR has awarded three $500 grants in support of the following, Joseph Albernaz (English) Deus Sive Veruft: Schelling’s Transformation of Spinoza’s God – March 18, 2015 Yitzhak Melamed (Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University), will give a lecture examining the …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion is offering five to ten summer research grants in the amount of $5000 each for advanced graduate students working on topics in the study of religion, broadly construed. Applications are welcome from all UC Berkeley Ph.D. students who have advanced to candidacy, with preference given to those who are close to completion …
BCSR’s Graduate Student Event Grants support innovative proposals for graduate student-led lectures, seminars, working groups and conferences for public and campus audiences. Awards range from $250 to $500 for a lecture, and up to $1000 for a conference. Requirement Summary – Awards provide partial funding for lectures, panels, conferences, exhibitions, or performances on topics in religion. – Awards from $250 …
BCSR has selected “Between the Visible and the Invisible: Cosmology, Ritual, and Hermeneutics in Historical and Contemporary Chinese Worlds” to receive $1000 in graduate student event grant funding. The two-day event on November 14 and 15 presents the results of a yearlong interdisciplinary exploration by the Haas Junior Scholars Program of the Institute of East Asian Studies on the relations …
BCSR welcomes Visiting Scholar Damon Mayrl, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Prof. Mayrl’s research interests are in comparative secularization, religion and politics, historical methods, and public policy. His first book, Secular Conversions (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press) examines how political and institutional factors have contributed to the development of distinct patterns of secularization in Australian and …
The 2014 Faculty Project Development Group (PDG) Grant has been awarded to Professors Niklaus Largier (German and Comparative Literature) and David Marno (English) for their collaborative project, Poetics of Prayer. The goal of the project is to develop a rhetoric and poetics of prayer from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century in tandem with prayer’s echoes in early modern …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR), an academic center for independent and innovative research in religion, announces the nine recipients of the 2014-15 Graduate Student Summer Research Grants. These projects address a broad range of issues and topics in religion including relationships of religion to media and politics, under-seen global or early religious communities, and religious doctrine …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) is offering five summer research grants in the amount of $5000 each for advanced graduate students working on topics in the study of religion, broadly construed. Applications are welcome from all UC Berkeley Ph.D. students who have advanced to candidacy, with preference be given to those who are close to completion …
The Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR) is sponsoring 1 to 2 Project Development Groups (PDG) in the study of religion for faculty in academic year 2014-15. BCSR PDGs provide an opportunity for small collaborative faculty groups to work on larger-scale projects related to the study of religion. Collaboration across the humanities and the social sciences is often …
The “Humanitarian Ethics, Religious Affinities, and the Politics of Dissent” UC Humanities Studio is pleased to announce a dissertation workshop for UC graduate students, to be held on March 17-18, 2014 at UC Santa Cruz. Graduate students will have the opportunity to share and receive comments on a chapter of their research project, which will be read by a group …
We are delighted to announce the launch of the BCSR website. As one of Berkeley’s newest research ventures, our mission is to support and promote the best contemporary scholarship on religion across the disciplines. We are committed to engaging audiences both inside and outside the walls of Berkeley, in the hope that our scholarship might shape the many ongoing conversations …
