Minority Studies

On 17 December, at Øysteinsgate 3 room 410, 15:00-16:30, István Keul will discuss his research on religious minorities in Transylvania. The presentation inquires into ethno-religious diversification and majority-minority relations on an intermediary, intra-group level. The selected case studies discuss differentiation processes within an ethno-religious community often perceived as largely homogenous and socio-culturally predominantly static, the Lutheran Transylvanian Saxons. These instances of internal diversification question widespread assumptions regarding the religious affiliation of the Transylvanian Saxons on the one hand, and the ethnic composition of the Lutheran Church in Romania on the other.

On Tuesday 3 December, 15:00-16:30, Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3) Alexander van der Haven will discuss his draft article “Religious Minorities” in Israel for Religious Minorities Online.

Within its borders – on where they lie or should lie there is some disagreement – the State of Israel governs not only over a variety of Israelite communities – Samaritans, Karaites, Black Hebrews, Messianic Jews, and a wide range of communities within the rabbinical Jewish majority, but also over others: Sunni Muslims (Palestinian, Bedouin, Circassians), Ahmadiyya, Druze, Bahá'í, Jains, a great variety of Christian communities, New Religious Movements (among which the only Scientology center independent from the Scientology Church) as well as the religious of immigrants and temporary workers from all over the world. Having inherited it from the Ottomans and then the British, the State manages a ‘millet system’ that awards recognized religious communities a certain extent of independence in religious matters, which also extends to civil legal aspects, such as birth, marriage, divorce, and burial. All of Israel’s Jewish residence fall under the Jewish millet led by Orthodox leadership. The article analyzes the adoption, implementation, and changes in this system as well as other changes regarding to religious minorities, from the beginning of the State to the present.

On Tuesday 26 November, 15.00–16.30, Seminarrom 1, Øysteinsgate 3, will assistant professor Sivan Balslev present Children in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution: Intersections of Age, Class and Gender in Political Activism. The lecture is co-organized with the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.

For more information on the lecture and Sivan Balslev, please click here.

On Wednesday 30 October, from 15:00-16:30 Oslo time, will Dr. Jürgen Schaflechner discuss his forthcoming book on religious minorities in Pakistan (Columbia University Press, 2025). This chapter discusses the Bene Ephraim, a community that regards itself as Jewish.

Dr. Schaflechner is research leader at the Freie Universität in Berlin as well as filmmaker, having made among others the film on Pakistan Thrust in Heaven (2016). His research focus is on religious minority movements in South Asia in the digital age.

The presentation will take place on zoom. To receive the zoom link of the discussion, please contact Alexander van der Haven (alexander.haven@uib.no).

For those interested in reading one of the book chapters which we will use for  of his book that we will discuss, please also contact Alexander van der Haven.

See event here.

In the Next Year anon (MOVIE)

On Tuesday 3 September, 14:00-15:00, Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3): Manuel Italien in Conversation with Bhikkhunī Dhammananda, Updates from the Land of the Smiling Faces

Come and get introduced to Thailand’s first fully ordained Theravada Buddhist nun, Bhikkhunī Dhammananda. The event will take the form of an interview format between Associate Prof. Manuel Litalien who is visiting AHKR from Nipissing University, Canada, and (on zoom) Bhikkhunī Dhammananda, and a discussion between the audience and Dhammananda. Dr. Litalien has followed the development of the Bhikkhunī movement in the kingdom since the early 2000 (for a background article on the movement click here). The event will help you understand how Bhikkhunī Dhammananda managed to promote gender equality in an environment where religious orthodoxy is dominated by a patriarchal state Buddhism. As the year 2022 saw the celebration of Bhikkhunī (fully ordained nuns) in Thai society moving toward its third decade, we are taking this opportunity to delve deeper into what has been accomplished thus far, and what are some of the current projects, along with a reflection on what lies ahead in three distinct spheres, religious, political, and international.

It is also possible to attend the meeting through zoom. Please contact Alexander.Haven@uib.no for the zoom link

Link to event.

On Thursday 16 May, 14:00-15:00, Sydnesplassen 12-13, room 210, Sissel Undheim will lecture on Material Religion and Processions in the City. This lecture is also part of the course RELV 215/315 Religious Bergen: A Field Course

On Wednesday 15 May, 11:00-13:00, Sydnesplassen 12-13, room 210, Bernadett Bigalke and Katharina Neef (University of Leipzig), Victoria Vitanova-Kerber (University of Freiburg), Rasa Pranskeviciute-Amoson (University of Vilnius), and Mario Vassallo (University of Malta) will present on religions and the city in Leipzig, Malta, Vilnius and Switzerland. This forum is also part of the course RELV 215/315 Religious Bergen: A Field Course.

On Tuesday 14 May, 18:00-19:00, Sydnesplassen 12-13, room 208/209, Michael Stausberg will give the lecture Bergen, Introducing the Field. This lecture is also part of the course RELV 215/315 Religious Bergen: A Field Course

On Wednesday April 24, at 14:00-15:00, Sydnesplass 12/13 , room 130.

Minority studies and Fagforum Religionsvitenskap hosts Arkotong Longkumer of the University of Edinburgh, School of Divinity.

The presentation charts the work of guru Mashangva, an indigenous rock-fusion artist in the Northeastern Indian state of Manipur. It explores the notion of ‘acoustemology’ as ‘a sonic epistemology of emplacement’ that highlights how guru is texturing the contours of sound as ecologies of creation – a creative process that is charged with energy, knowledge, place-making, and imagination. 

Link to event.

On Thursdag April 11, at 16:00-17:00, Øysteinsgate 3, room 418. We will have a book seminar about Pinky Hota's Violence and Recognition: Adivasi Indigeneity and Anti-Dalitness in India (U of Penn Press, 2023), with our guest Erica Baffelli of Manchester University.

On Wednesday April 10, at 14:00-15:30, Øysteinsgate 3 room 418. Professor Erica Baffelli, professor of Japanese Studies of Manchester University, will give a guest lecture “Networks, volunteers and precarity: a case study of a Buddhist organisation in a Tokyo during the covid-19 pandemic”. This meeting serves also as the fagforum for the section of the study of religion.

On Tuesday April 9, at 15:00-17:00, Øysteinsgate 3, seminarroom 1. Professor Erica Baffelli, professor of Japanese Studies of Manchester University, will present a draft of her chapter on religious minorities in Japan, to be published in Religious Minorities Online. Please contact Alexander.Haven@uib.no for a draft of the article

On 15 February, 15:00-17:00, Dokkeveien 2 B – hjørnerommet, Thomas Solomon will present The musical aestheticization of exile: Zaza (Kurdish-Alevi) musicians between Turkey and Germany. The presentation and discussion will be in English.

In his 1984 essay “Reflections on Exile,” the late Palestianian literary scholar and cultural critic Edward Said discussed some aspects of the politics and aesthetics of exilic cultural production. Said draws primarily on examples from literature (novels, poetry), with the result that the asethetic issues he discusses remained primarily at the textual level. This paper puts some of Said’s ideas in dialog with questions more specifically related to the musical production of exilic subjects. As deeply embodied forms of cultural expression combining sound, language, and moving bodies in performance, musical evocations of exile offer other kinds of possibilities for the aesthetic exploration of the condition of exile. Such possibilities are further extended in multimedia productions such as videoclips, in which the musical and the visual interact to produce complex audiovisual texts, apt for the exploration of the contradictions of exile and exilic identity. Musical performance events can be sites for the constitution of exilic subjects and subjectivities, sometimes in unexpected ways, as when exiled musicians are absent from performances of their music in the homeland they have been exiled and displaced from. In such cases, one can speak of a present-absence which powerfully, if paradoxically, embodies the exilic condition.

This presentation uses the music of Metin and Kemal Kahraman as a case study to explore these issues. The Kahraman brothers are from Dersim, a region in southeastern Anatolia that was historically largely autonomous, though it is now incorporated into the Turkish state. The people of Dersim, the majority of whom belong to the heterodox religious group known as the Alevi, constitute an ethnolinguistic and religious minority in Turkey. While they are often included within the more encompassing categories “Kurdish” or “Kurdish-Alevi,” the Zaza have a distinct language, culture and historical sense of identity from the Kurdish-speaking populations that surround them; this identity is profoundly grounded in the sacred geography of their Dersim homeland. For nearly two decades, Kemal Kahraman lived in stateless exile in Berlin, unable to return to Turkey or Dersim. In the music he makes with his brother, Kemal’s personal experience of exile is closely articulated with collective historical exiles and displacements his people have experienced during the early Turkish republican period and more recently during the civil war in the southeast. The brothers’ music explicitly reflects upon and aestheticizes the exilic experience of displacement and longing for home. The paper explores how their music translates the experience of exile into aesthetic form, drawing on the Kahraman brothers’ sound recordings, videos, and a concert the author attended in Istanbul.

Go to event.

01.02: Discussion of draft of the conceptual introduction to the Religious Minorities Online project

On Wednesday February 1, at 16:15-17:30, Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysyeinsgate 3), followed by a social gathering. 

17.04: Lunch event ‘Recognizing religious minorities’ with Teemu Taira

On Monday April 17, at 12:00-13:00, Seminarrom 1 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3), the Minority Studies research group will host professor Teemu Taira from the University of Helsinki. 
 
The lunch event will concentrate on the roles of legislation, media, and expert knowledge connected to the registration of religious organisations, especially relating to religious minorities. Dr Taira will draw on his research in connection with Finnish cases and draw on more general discussions on the legislative challenges religious minorities face in the Nordics, and beyond. The participants will be able to bring their research interests or particular cases to the discussion.
 
Recommended reading: Teemu Taira (2022) Chapter 4 The Art of Becoming a Religion: Law, Media and Experts In: Taking ‘Religion’ Seriously: Essays on the Discursive Study of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004511682_005

22.05: Poster session junior member research projects

On Monday 22 May, at 9:00-10:30, Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3), we will have a poster session to discuss, comment on, and ask about the minority projects of several of our junior members, namely the MA students and PhD candidates Henriette Flaaten, Joanna Zofia Spyra, Fredrik Kolstad Rongved, and Raphael Michaeli.

25.08: Guest lecture: Marisol de la Cadena

On Friday 25 August, at 12:15-14:00, Sydneshaugen skole Auditorium D. For details see: https://www.uib.no/ahkr/164156/guest-lecture-marisol-de-la-cadena

30.08: Discussion about ‘Fritak’ in Norwegian schools, with Lomsdalen, von der Lippe, and Undheim

On Wednesday August 30, 14:15- 15:30, at Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3), Christian Lomsdalen, Marie von der Lippe, and Sissel Undheim will present «Hva ønsker religiøse minoriteter fritak fra i norsk skole – og hvorfor?». The presentation will be in Norwegian.

12.09: Discrimination of Religious Minorities, with Michael Stausberg

On Tuesday September 12, 16:15-17:30, Seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3), followed by a social gathering. A draft of the article will be distributed to members beforehand. Non-members interesting to join please write to Alexander.haven@uib.no to receive a copy. 

02.11: Hege Markussen on organising as Alevi in Turkey Today. Reflections from Recent Fieldwork in Ankara

On Thursday 2 November, 16:00-17:30, seminarrom 418 at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (Øysteinsgate 3), Hege Markussen will present her project in the Alevis. For more information see event.

07.11: Discussing Religious Minorities at Risk: A Book Seminar

On Tuesday 7 November, 15:30-17:00, Øysteinsgt. 3, rom 418, we will be discussing a recent publication, namely:

Basedau, Matthias, Jonathan Fox, and Ariel Zellman, Religious Minorities at Risk (New York, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197693940.001.0001. The book is digitally available through our library website.

13.11: A viewing and discussion of Elsewhere, a documentary on the Turkish Dönmeh, with documentary maker Melis Birder

On Monday 13 November, 16:00-18:00 in Sem. rom 1, Øysteinsgate 3, the research group Minority Studies has organized together with Det jødiske samfunn Bergen a screening of parts of the documentary that the Turkish documentary maker Melis Birder is making on the Dönmeh, a small Turkish religious minorities descended from Jews who in the late seventeenth century converted to Islam but still follow their Jewish Messiah, Sabbatai Tsevi. Introduction and response by Alexander van der Haven, followed by a discussion. The presentation and discussion will be held in English.

For more information check out event.

14.11: Guest lecture: Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati on Islam in contemporary Scandinavian literature and rap

On Tuesday 14 November, 14:30-15:30, in HF building room 400, professor Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati (UiO) will hold a guest lecture on Islam in contemporary Scandinavian literature and rap. The lecture will be in Norwegian. The lecture is offered by the Religion and Literature research group and Minority Studies.

14.11: A viewing and discussion of Baglar, a documentary on a Kurdish basketball team in Southeastern Turkey

On Tuesday 14 November, 16:00-18:00, in Sem. rom 1, Øysteinsgate 3, we will watch and discuss with the Turkish documentary maker Melis Birder the documentary Baglar, directed by Berke Bas and Melis Birder, about how “an underdog basketball team from hard scrabble Diyarbakir in Southeastern Turkey goes beyond winning games in their mission to rise above prejudice, poverty and political turmoil created by the decades long conflict between the Turkish state and Kurdish rebels who are fighting for local autonomy and cultural rights.” The presentation and discussion will be held in English.

For more information check out event.

22.11 Guest lecture: Nauroz Khan on Swedish Afghan Pashtuns

On Wednesday 22 november, 16:15-17:30, in Øysteinsgate 3, rom 418, Nauroz Khan, doctoral researcher from Kingston University London, will present “The Transnational Lives of Swedish Afghan Pashtuns: The Challenges of Double Migration, Cultural and Kinship Maintenance and Integration in Swedish Society.” A Selections of writings will be distributed. Associate Professor Aziz Hakimi (HVL), will be the respondent. The presentation and discussion will be held in English.

15.12 István Keul on Ethno-Religious Communities in East-Central Europe: Structures and Processes of Minoritization

On 15 December, 15:00-17:00, at Dokkeveien 2B - hjørnerommet. István Keul will look at consequences of changing statal configurations and shifting political structures for the majority-minority relations of religious communities living in a region that was successively part of the medieval kingdom of Hungary (up to 1526), the Transylvanian Principality (1526-1687), the Habsburg Empire (1687-1867), Hungary (1867-1918), and Romania (1918 to the present). The main focus lies on the Romanian communities in the region and the connected processes of religious institutionalization and differentiation from the early modern period to the present. The presentation and discussion will be in English.