ESITIS 2024 Anne Hege Grung - The Geopolitics of Interreligious Dialogue

Anne Hege Grung is a professor of Interreligious studies at the University of Oslo. Her main areas of research includes conceptualization and critique of interreligious dialogue including feminist perspectives, Christian-Muslim relations, plural chaplaincy and spiritual care. Among her publications are Gender Justice in Muslim-Christian Readings. Christian and Muslim Women in Norway Making Meaning of Texts from the Bible, the Koran and the Hadith (2015), “Interreligious Dialogue in the Squeeze between Diplomacy and Contextual Practices” (2017), “Negotiating gender justice between state, religion and NGOs: A Lebanese case” (2018) Complexities of Spiritual Care in Plural Societies. Education, Praxis and Concepts (2022). Grung has been president of ESITIS (2017-2022) and is presently the Dean of Research at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo.
2024 ESITIS Conference explored the radical pluralities at the heart of contemporary interreligious engagement. Its geographical and methodological pluralities provide new generative possibilities for understanding, as voices from the majority world contribute perspectives that reflect local historical trajectories, and as disciplines within the political sciences furnish conceptual tools that complement a focus on texts and rituals in theology and religious studies and the sociology and anthropology of religion. Understanding the role of religion vis à vis governmental and international relations provides new resources for understanding the forces that shape religious life within and between traditions and provides new opportunities to build peaceful relations.