Emmy Noether funding at the Institute for the Study of Religion
Dr. Carmen Becker has been a researcher at the LUH Institute for the Study of Religion since 2015. She has been awarded Emmy Noether funding for her project The Reproduction of Religion in Secular Societies (RelSec). In secular societies, fewer and fewer people are clearly professing their belonging to a religion and religious institutions are losing members. Nevertheless, religion is a central point of reference for differentiating between individuals, objects and collectives. For example, secular courts decide whether a community can be granted the status of a religious community. In educational contexts and the cultural sphere, religion is an element of cultural heritage. In four subprojects, the research group will study how religion is continually reproduced within social and institutional arenas as a category for differentiation and classification in secular societies.
The Emmy Noether Programme is intended for postdocs with outstanding qualifications and junior professors with non-permanent contracts who are in the early stages of their academic career. It enables them to obtain the qualifications necessary for a university professorship by independently heading an Emmy Noether research group over the course of six years.
