As part of the Critical Realism Network Webinar Series, Professor Philip Gorski of Yale University would like to invite you to join the upcoming webinar with Professor Kevin Schilbrack (Department of Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University) on Critical Realism and the Academic Study of Religion.

Date: Wednesday, April 19th
Time: 12:00-1:30 pm EST
Click here to register: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1033739221691083777

Brief Description:  In this webinar, I’ll explore how critical realism aids our understanding of both scholars who study religious agents and the religious agents themselves. I’ll briefly contextualize the debate among religious studies scholars today about the status of the central conceptual category of “religion”. Some contemporary scholars, influenced by genealogy and deconstruction, argue that religion was not discovered in those cultures but was rather manufactured, imagined, or invented in Europe and then imposed on the rest of the world.  Here, religion is a social construction, a projection of the western imagination. On what grounds can Western scholars retain the concept? In response, I will argue that CR enables us to speak of religion as a real entity, a social structure, that operated even before the word was created. I will consider three arguments for abolishing the category of “religion” and show how CR provides tools with which we can respond to them. Second, how does CR help us understand religious agents? Religious people organize their lives around and claim to experience value-laden realities that those who are not members of their communities typically cannot see. What is needed, then, is a relational ontology where human beings are not independent substances but are rather constituted by their relations.

Berlin Summer School

The summer school aims at supporting young researchers by strengthening their ability in linking theory and empirical research. The two-week program creates an excellent basis for the development of their current research designs.

In the first week, we address the key methodological challenges of concept-building, causation/explanation, and micro-macro linkage that occur in almost all research efforts. We strive for a clarification of the epistemological foundations underlying methodological paradigms. In the second week, these methodological considerations are applied to central empirical fields of research in political science, sociology, and other related disciplines. In this second part of the program, participants are assigned to four thematic groups according to their own research topics. The thematic areas covered are: “External Governance, Inter-regionalism, and Domestic Change”, “Citizenship, Migration, and Identities”, “Social Struggle and Globalization”, and “Democracy at the Crossroads”.

The international summer school is open to 50 PhD candidates, advanced master students, and young postdocs. The call for applications is currently open. Applications can be submitted online via the application form on the summer school webpage until March 31, 2017.

Bergen Summer Research School

‘Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things. Law, state practices and resistance’, June 12-22 2017.

This interdisciplinary PhD course aims to deepen the understanding of the politics of protection and control of contemporary migration. It asks: How are migrants given different bureaucratic and legal identities (e.g. refugees, stateless persons, irregular migrants) and what are the consequences of such distinctions and labels? What protection does international law and humanitarian institutions offer to different categories of people? What are the spatial, temporal and gendered implications of the protection and control practices aimed at migrants? And, how are the legal and bureaucratic identities, and institutions of migration control, challenged by migrants themselves?

This course is one of six parallel courses in 2017, spanning disciplines within health, humanities, and social sciences. In addition to the courses, there will be a series of joint sessions about research tools for PhD candidates, but also plenary sessions with keynotes, debates, and an excursion.

For more information and for applications, please visit the summer school website.