Programmes of study in “Religion and Politics”

Research-based teaching in “Religion and Politics”

The support that the University of Münster’s Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” gives to early-career researchers begins with teaching for students, with Cluster members regularly offering interdisciplinary courses on their research in the field of religion and politics. The University has in recent years expanded its programmes of study in the subject areas of interdisciplinary research on religion, and will continue to do so in the future. A new interdisciplinary MA programme “Religion and Politics” is being planned, which will help prepare talented students for an academic career in the Cluster of Excellence or to train them for careers that are shaped by a growing cultural and religious diversity.

Degree programmes related to religion

The University of Münster has in recent years greatly expanded its programmes of study in the field of interdisciplinary research on religion. Besides the extensive range of programmes of study already offered by the Faculty of Protestant Theology and the Faculty of Catholic Theology, a BA programme in General Religious Studies was established in 2008, and the BA programmes “Islamic Theology” and “Islamic Religious Education” have been established at the Centre for Islamic Theology (ZIT) for those students wanting to enter the teaching profession. The Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (GKM) has run an interdisciplinary MA programme in “Ancient Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean” since 2007, which widens the usual focus on Greek and Roman antiquity by integrating Egyptology and Islamic Studies. The Institute for Jewish Studies has established a cultural studies BA programme in “Jewish Studies”.

MA programme “Religion and Politics”

A new interdisciplinary MA programme “Religion and Politics” is being planned, which will help prepare talented students for an academic career in the Cluster of Excellence or to train them for careers that are shaped by a growing cultural and religious diversity. Research at the Cluster of Excellence has already fed into numerous courses that members of the Cluster offer in their departments at the University of Münster, and this MA programme will help to strengthen the integration of research and teaching even further.

The cross-denominational and interdisciplinary MA programme will be set up by the departments involved in the Cluster of Excellence in cooperation with the Cluster itself. Combining the contents and methods of research on religion in the humanities and social sciences at the University of Münster, the programme is aimed at students with a BA degree both from the humanities and social sciences as well as from other disciplines related to religion and from law. The programme is research-based, but also has practical elements. It is intended to prepare students for further academic work (dissertation) in the field of research on religion, while at the same time qualifying them for careers that demand skills in dealing with cultural, and especially religious, diversity.