Lecture Casts

Student project 2020/21

These lecture casts were created by students of Erfurt University who participated in the lecture series “Religion and Urbanity across Time and Space” during the winter term 2020-21. The learning outcomes for StuFu students included also introductory training and instructions on how to use social media, podcasting and video recording services for research purposes. 

Both members and fellows of the International Centre for Advanced Studies "Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations" (Max Weber Centre) presented at this lecture series, which was open to all members of Erfurt University. In addition, the organisers, Elisa Iori and Emiliano Urciuoli, invited distinguished specialists based at German universities. 

In assembling the lectures, Iori and Urciuoli, emphasized the substantial, entangled changes to urban life and religion, on the production, adaptation, and dismantling of space, and on the role played by different collective and individual actors. By means of historical reconstruction, the lectures raised the question of comparable current constellations and possible developments in the future. 

The lecture series was based on the research group’s understanding that religion and urbanity are world-wide pervasive and long-established strategies of handling and fostering human sociality. In a world where over half of the population lives in cities and religion is far from disappearing or being relegated to the private, the question as to how they have interlocked historically is a critical issue that still needs further and more fine-grained exploration. Planned as a consistent course of 15 lectures, the lecture series presented such connections by zooming in on specific examples of Mediterranean, North-European, North-American, and Asian cities from the rise of urbanism to the present time.