Center for Cultural and Religious Studies
History
The Center draws on the institutional tradition of sociology of religion and on the critical analysis of secularisation and concomitant »return of the sacred« that was in a larger Yugoslav frame pioneered more than thirty years ago by the founding father of the Center, then named Center for the Study of Religion and Church. Today, the Center continues to study the relationships between religious communities and the state, but it broadened its scope to include the study of non-Roman Catholic religious practices and communities. This is done in a comparative frame of modernity in general and of Eastern European peripheral modernisation in particular.
Research focus
It includes, but is not limited to the proliferation of life-styles, the impact of mass media on the mechanisms of individual perception, writers and post-communism; national mythologies, ethnic identifications and history of mentalities in SouthEastern and Central Europe; institutions of high art as well as of popular expressive forms, national identities and globalisation, the relationship between Slovenian particularism and European/Western universalism; and the role, function, and meaning of the carriers of »cultural capital« before and after the establishment of independent Slovenian nation-state.
International collaboration
Beyond the principal nationally funded projects, research associates collaborate with, inter alia, Keston Institute, Oxford; Institute for East Central Europe-Columbia University, New York City; School of East European and Slavonic Studies, University of London; Center for Religious Research-Jagelonian University, Krakow; Roberta Buffet Center for Comparative and International Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago.
Contact
Center for Cultural and Religious Studies
School of Social Sciences
University of Ljubljana
Kardeljeva pl. 5
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Director: Aleš Debeljak, Ph.D., Professor of Cultural Studies
Research Associates
- Accredited professors and scholars from the Department of Cultural Studies
- School of Social Sciences
- University of Ljubljana
