Researchinterviews 2025-2026

In the series "Researchinterviews 2025-26" researchers discuss their work at the Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics".

• "There is a high level of religious literacy in Indonesia"

  Interview with Simone Sinn

  

  Indonesia is one of the most diverse countries in the world – geographically, socially and religiously. With over 17,000 islands and more than 270 million inhabitants, the archipelago faces particular challenges, while at the same time playing an increasingly important role in regional and global contexts. In an interview about her research on Indonesia, religious studies scholar and Protestant theologian Simone Sinn from the Cluster of Excellence talks about past and present conflicts, the country’s long colonial history, and the role of religion in the Indonesian constitution. Read more

• “Research into Laconia is really taking off at the moment“

  Interview with Historian Hans Beck

  

  How did forms of belonging develop in ancient Greece, and which role did Amyklaion play as a central hub in Laconia? Historian Hans Beck's Research project, “Belonging in/to Laconia. An archaeohistorical study on the Sanctuary of Apollo at Amyklai and its surroundings”, at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” explores this question. The subject of the study is the hill of Agia Kyriaki, 5 km south of Sparta, which has long been associated with the ancient cult center of Apollo Amyklaios. The research complements excavations that have been taking place on site for more than 20 years. Read more

• Abraham in everyday life

  Interview with Coptologist Gesa Schenke

  

  In this interview, Coptic scholar Gesa Schenke discusses her research at the Cluster of Excellence on two Egyptian manuscripts from the 4th and 10th centuries AD. Written in Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language, these manuscripts contain the earliest known Jewish-Christian record of the so-called Testament of Abraham. Gesa Schenke uses this narrative in the “Abraham in Everyday Life” project to explore the extent to which the thought of death and the impending Judgment of the Dead shapes religious, political and social behaviour in everyday life. Read more

• Between fluid identities and the potential for political learning

  Interview with Philosopher Franziska Dübgen

  

  In her research at the Cluster of Excellence, political philosopher Franziska Dübgen, head of the project “Articulations of the ‘political’ in contemporary postcolonial contexts of north and sub-Saharan Africa”, deals with innovative concepts of the political, her focus here being primarily on concepts that political philosophy and political theory have developed in recent decades in and with regard to Africa. Read more

• “Ideas about Vikings today can often not be verified scientifically”

  Scholars of Scandinavian studies Roland Scheel and Simon Hauke about their research

  

  According to scholars of Scandinavian studies, ideas about Vikings and pagan Norse mythology today can often not be verified scientifically. “They are based essentially on reports written by Christian scholars in the High Middle Ages well over a century later, since, besides brief runic inscriptions, no written texts from the original period have been preserved”, says  Scandinavian scholar Roland Scheel from the Cluster of Excellence. Read more

• New perspectives on Iron Age tribal kingdom

  Interview with Archaeologist Katharina Schmidt

  

  In an Interview, Archaeologist Katharina Schmidt talks about her project at the Cluster of Excellence on the mountain settlements in the Kingdom of Edom (700–500 BC) in what is now southern Jordan. Recent investigations of these mountain settlements suggest that they were not, as has often been assumed, inaccessible, temporary refuges. Rather, they were permanent, agriculturally self-sufficient settlements that were sustainably farmed over generations. This paints a completely new picture of Edom, which was composed of very different realities of life. Read more

   

• Icons – a symbol of Russian identity between tradition, religion and politics

  Interview with Slavic scholar Irina Wutsdorff and Daniela Amodio

  

  Between religious tradition and aesthetic innovation: Russian art and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries contain numerous references to icon painting – for example, in Sergei Eisenstein's film ‘Bežin lug ’ or Kazimir Malevich's ‘Black Square’. “References to icons reveal a worldview, one that is certainly also political in nature,” says Slavic scholar Irina Wutsdorff from the University of Münster, whose research at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” focuses on the significance of icons in Russian art and literature, in an interview together with Daniela Amodio. Read more