• Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (POLY)

  • We are a research group housed at Goethe University in Frankfurt

  • We are interested in premodern Christianities around the globe

  • We investigate dynamic plurality as a driving force of change across and within communities of belief

  • Our primary goal is to decentralise religious history before 1800

  • Together, we hope to understand the formation of religious communities

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Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (POLY)

The purpose of the POLY Research Group Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (circa 700–1800 CE), housed at Goethe University Frankfurt and funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), is twofold. First, we aim to facilitate and support comparative interdisciplinary research into preindustrial or premodern Christianities around the globe. Second, we will investigate the ways in which dynamic plurality works as a driving force of change across and within communities of belief.

 

Our primary goal is to decentralise religious history before 1800. We will also historicise and question the unitary and universalist self-images nurtured by institutional churches, as well as the corresponding models of religious culture or transformation found in modern scholarship. This ambitious intellectual agenda is supported by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars. Together, we hope to more deeply understand the formation of religious communities by local and global forces, as well as the myriad connections among them.

Upcoming Events

Women, Heresy, and Power: Female Dispensations in the Hands of the Holy Office

Start
17.12.2024
Time
18:15
Location
Goethe University Frankfurt (Campus Westend), IG-Farben-Haus, IG 454 (Ground Floor)
Speaker
Eléna Guillemard (Louvain)
More

Panel Discussion “Frankfurter Religionsgespräche”: “Religionssoziologie und Emotion”

Start
17.01.2025
Time
14:15
Location
Goethe University Frankfurt (Campus Westend), PEG-Gebäude, PEG 1.G 192, and online
Speaker
Monique Scheer (Tübingen) and Volkhard Krech (Bochum)
More

Latest News

Report on our Summer School “Religion postkolonial?”

The journal of Goethe University Frankfurt published an article about our upcoming summer school “Religion postkolonial?”. The organisers Birgit Emich...

An Interview with Andreea Badea and Alexandra Walsham

Coping with religious plurality in the early modern age: This could be the title of a dialogue between Andreea Badea, Alexandra Walsham and Louise Zbi...

Conference Report “Embodying Reformation”

Between the 19th and 20th of May 2023, the POLY Research Group held its annual conference in Bad Homburg. The symposium aimed to trace the role of the...

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