Religion, Minorities and Human Rights in Europe, Sandbjerg (Denmark) 27 September - 1 October 2006

This Workshop of the research network "Religion, Ethics and Law in the Nordic Societies" seeks to address one of the challenging issues in our societies: the legal status of minorities (religious, national or other) within a transnational framework. We invite researchers from all relevant disciplines to discuss various aspects of that theme. This task is as complex and multifaceted as the changing situation in our societies. From homogeneous societies with Lutheran state-churches, they are developing into a pluralist and multireligious condition. On the legal level, society has to deal with religion also in the form of minority-groups. The workshop seeks to look at this problem within the broader question about the place of religious minorities (possibly national) in a transnational and global context.

Speakers include

• Johannes van der Ven (professor of Comparative Empirical Science of Religion, Radboud University Nijmegen)
• Werner Heun (Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Göttingen)
• Hanne Petersen (Professor of Greenlandic Sociology of Law, University of Copenhagen)
• Heiner Bielefeldt (German Institute of Human Rights, Berlin)
• Eivind Smith (Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Oslo)

We welcome papers that examine aspects of ethics, law and religion with special regard to the following themes:

1. General questions about the relation between ethics, law and religion

2. The place of religious and other monorities in a European context

3. European models for the state – religion relationship

Papers may be given in English, German or Nordic languages.

The papers will be selected on the basis of abstracts that should not exceed one page (2300 units).

Deadline for all abstracts is 15 May 2006 .

Abstracts will be subject to an evaluation by peers from the board of the network, which will be completed by mid June 2006. It might be necessary to reject papers due to time limitation.

Please send your contributions as e-mail attachments to sa@teo.au.dk or to our postal address:

NorForsk-Netværk

Afdeling for Systematisk Teologi

Købmagergade 44-46

DK 1150 København K.

For further information on the conference please visit our website: www.teol.ku.dk/ast/norfa