Objects of Religious Education and Practice - Function and Use of Material Objects and Artefacts in Exemplary Spaces

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Antje Roggenkamp
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437338470

The scientific network develops new perspectives on religious educational processes and practices through material objects and artefacts. Its members, who represent various disciplines, in particular practical theology and religious education, deal with the function and use of religious objects. The network conferences will focus on the analysis and discussion of object-related religious or practical executions. Different ways of dealing with things or objects will be explored using art historical, empirical and ethnographic approaches. These include everyday objects from profane and religious contexts, utility objects, paintings, sculptures and installations, objects and artefacts in selected church rooms as well as the extended use of church buildings. The network asks about the significance of objects for practical theology, including religious education. Its members seek to make the function of things for religious practice and everyday culture visible from an interdisciplinary perspective. The approach of the Academic Network is practicing a paradigm shift by means of various approaches to objects and artefacts and reflects these experiences with regard to the methodological further development of religious education and practical theological research perspectives. The thematic and methodological approach of the network group focuses on the material dimension of practices and reflects their reality-constituting function also in spatial and practice-theoretical perspectives. The aim of the network group is to make the contribution of materiality research to practical theological theory formation, including religious education, visible in a larger joint publication. The joint work, which is based on several individual volumes, comprises the reflection and interdisciplinary description of innovative ways of dealing with the formative potential of everyday objects with a religious connotation, the sensitization to the use of artefacts in pedagogical performances, the function of objects for different approaches of church education and their significance for the individual experience of the extended use of church spaces within the framework of practical theological performances. Overall, interdisciplinary strategies, methodological approaches from art and religious studies as well as sociology of religion, but also transnational perspectives are applied. The members of the scientific network have experience from the German, French, Norwegian, Austrian and Swiss, but also from the international (EuARe, AARe, International Academy of Practical Theology, ISREV) research and science context. The network will have its own homepage, which will report on its activities in digital form.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Sonja Keller