UCSIA Summer School 2025

24 – 29 August 2025

UCSIA Summer School Group picture by Sigrid Meulemans

From left to right: Prashant Kumar, Junesse Crisostomo, Yasmin Moll, Arisy Abror Dzukroni, Prathistha Maurya, Shajeem Muhammad Fazal P V, Dries Ver Elst, Shaheel Muhammad T, Nicolò Di Dio, Mick Feyaerts, Gabriela de la Vega, Vlad Naumescu, Thomas Long, Elmoutassim Abdelmonim, Gilke Gunst

Missing from the picture: Martin Couto & Nadia Marzouki

© Sigrid Meulemans

theme

Competing Values, Shifting Norms

Questioning the Intersection of Religion and Politics through Moral Debates

The 2025 UCSIA Summer School brought together early career researchers to explore how the contemporary entanglement of religion and politics is increasingly articulated through moral debates and value conflicts. Building on the 2024 edition, which focused on theopolitics and theological narratives of nationalism, populism, and conservatism from an institutional perspective, the 2025 summer school shifted attention to moral tensions emerging from a bottom-up perspective and their impact on different levels of (theo)political action.

Moral values and norms shape understandings of the good life and are rooted in diverse philosophical and religious traditions that continue to inform cultural, social, and political dynamics. In a rapidly changing world marked by overlapping crises, religious and political frictions are often channeled through moralized discourses and value conflicts, for example around gender, migration, and bodily autonomy.

Throughout the week, participants examined the historical, philosophical, and theological sources of these moral debates, paying particular attention to shifting boundaries between the public and private, and the secular and religious. Central to these discussions was the question of moral authority: who defines values and norms, how they are interpreted, and how they translate into social and political practices.

By bringing together scholars from different disciplines within the human and social sciences, the UCSIA Summer School 2025 offered a space for critical reflection on moral issues and their political implications. Through lectures, paper presentations, and intensive discussions, participants explored how moral vocabularies can function both as sites of contestation and as sources of emancipation, shaping identities and collective imaginaries across personal, institutional, and state levels. 

Faculty

Vlad Naumescu © Sigrid Meulemans

Vlad Naumescu is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology of the Central European University.

Nadia Marzouki by Fanny Ritz

Nadia Marzouki is a political scientist and a research fellow at CNRS.

Yasmin Moll © Sigrid Meulemans

Yasmin Moll is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Presented papers

A central component of the summer school was the parallel paper sessions. In small, tutor-led groups, participants presented and discussed their research projects in depth. Each session combined paper presentations with extensive feedback and collective discussion, encouraging close engagement across disciplines and research stages.

Active participation was a key element of these sessions, with students preparing by reading each other’s work in advance and serving as respondents during peer presentations.

The following research papers were presented and discussed during the UCSIA Summer School 2025:

  • Attitudes Towards Abortion, Sexual Diversity, and Gender Identity Amidst the Moral Dispute in South America – Martin Couto
  • Deviant Divinities: The Performative Theologies of Progressive Christian Publics in the Philippines – Junesse Crisostomo
  • Godfluencers: The Christian Influencers Redefining Truth Through Digital Media and Moral Authority – Gabriela de la Vega
  • The Transcendental Conditions of Interreligious Dialogue Between Tolerance and the Recognition of the Other – Nicolò Di Dio
  • Halal For Sale: Sharia Inquiry, Market Forces, and State Business in Contemporary Indonesia – Arisy Abror Dzukroni
  • Sufi Women and Political Leadership: Historical and Contemporary Empowerment in Morocco – Elmoutassim Abdelmonim
  • Gender, Race, and Epistemic Privilege in an Anti-Clerical Dictatorship: Mobutu’s Politics of Authenticité and the Roman Catholic Church in Zaire – Mick Feyaerts
  • The Pedagogy of Anticaste Thought: Mangoo Ram Mugowalia (1886–1980), Ad Dharm and Ravidassia – Prashant Kumar
  • ‘Our Lord Is Not Woke’: Fracture, Politicisation and Baptists in Texas – Thomas Long
  • A Common Becoming? Ambedkar’s Resocialisation and the Question of Community – Pratishtha Maurya
  • Moral Life of Barkathkedu – Shajeem Muhammed Fazal P V
  • Faith and Votes: The Politicization of Religious Figures in Kerala’s Political Landscape – Shaheel Muhammad T
  • Between Words and Deeds: Religious-Political Citizenship in FBOs Beyond Binary Approaches and the Ethical Self-Formation Frame – Dries Ver Elst
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