Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "From Passions to Religion. The Rhetoric and Politics of Hume's account of Superstition." "Willem Lemmens" "Center for Ethics" "The project challenges the idea that Hume's account of superstition exemplifies a typical radical enlightenment approach of religion. While Hume without doubt defends a profound and major critique of the religious fanaticism that stands forward in monotheism and Christendom, he defends at the same time that religion is a product of the passions and imagination and as such forms an ineradicable part of the human condition. For Hume, the major question is not how reason could replace superstition, but how a politics of religion could help to alleviate the excesses of religious passions, while at the same time fostering the sense of morality. Thus Hume's precutionary conservatism is compaticle with the acceptance of a moderate form of superstition as constitutive dimension of human sociability and civil society. This project defends that this nuanced and pragmatic position of Hume can be reconstructed on the basis of his essays and the History of England. At the same time this project wants to elucidate the relation between Hume's religious scepticism and his practical critique of superstition." "Film, religion and politics: the 'Office Catholique International du Cinéma' (OCIC) and Italy (1948-1970)" "Roel Vande Winkel" "Institute for Media Studies, Inter-Actions Research Unit, Genk Campus" "This project investigates the relationship between the “Office Catholique International du Cinéma” (OCIC) and Italy through the analysis of Vatican politics towards OCIC, the role of the Italian representatives within the OCIC, and the presence of the OCIC at the Venice Film Festival. It is our premise that the history of the OCIC has been strongly influenced – and, in certain key moments, directly determined – by Italian politics: sometimes with fully fledged institutional conflicts (that were resolved through specific directives from the Roman curia), sometimes with disagreements, rather than full-on conflicts, regarding different approaches to cinema. This research can only be carried out in Leuven because the international archives of OCIC have been preserved at KADOC - Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society. A detailed overview of the archives was recently published by the promotor and copromotor of this application (Boes, Engelen, Vande Winkel, 2018)." "'Des deutschen Dichters Sendung': The collective symbolism and rhetorical structure of political religion in the poetry of the Junge Mannschaft. (1933-1938)." "Arvi Sepp" "Institute of Jewish Studies" "This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical structure and collective symbolism of political-religious discourse in the Nazi-biased poetry of the literary group Junge Mannschaft (1933-1945). This study combines a historical and a context-based approach to National Socialist poetry with a textanalytical one, through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)." "'Des deutschen Dichters Sendung': The collective symbolism and rhetorical structure of political religion in the poetry of the Junge Mannschaft." "Arvi Sepp" "Institute of Jewish Studies" "This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical structure and collective symbolism of political-religious discourse in the Nazi-biased poetry of the literary group Junge Mannschaft (1933-1945). This study combines a historical and a context-based approach to National Socialist poetry with a textanalytical one, through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)." "'Des deutschen Dichters Sendung': The Collective Symbolism and Rhetorical Structure of Political Religion in the Poetry of the Junge Mannschaft." "Arvi Sepp" "Institute of Jewish Studies" "This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical structure and collective symbolism of political-religious discourse in the Nazi-biased poetry of the literary group Junge Mannschaft (1933-1945). This study combines a historical and a context-based approach to National Socialist poetry with a textanalytical one, through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)." "Peace and discipline. A study in political theory on peace education in international politics: the North-Atlantic region (1945-2007)." "Tom Sauer" "Faculty Research SW, International Politics" "This research project seeks to reflect on the meaning of peace, and on the role of peace education in bringing about international peace. We will suggest an understanding of peace as 'disciplined order' as opposed to its conventional definition (in IR theory) as the 'absence of war.' Inspiration is drawn from classical political theory, strands of which have highlighted the role of education in shaping virtuous citizens, and consequently in bringing about a peaceful society. The empirical validity of the model will be tested in the case of the reigning North-Atlantic peace." "Modern time-consciousness: philosophy and politics of history - Leo Strauss on history and truth in the relation of theory and praxis." "Bart Raymaekers" "Research in Political Philosophy and Ethics Leuven (RIPPLE)" "This project aims to analyze the political philosophy of the German-American philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) in the context of modern debates concerning history, time-consciousness, and the relation between theory and praxis. The project will include both a systematic and a historical dimension in the fields of political philosophy and philosophy of history.The first part of the project will clarify a set of problems centering on the relation of philosophy and politics in the post-Hegelian situation of a pervasive historial consciousness. The second part will investigate the thought of Leo Strauss as an attempt to give answers to these problems.The issues at stake include some of the most pressing problems for philosophical reflection on politics, such as historical relativism and the status of truth in the relationship between philosophy and politics. The work of Strauss faces these problems in highly relevant and still unappreciated ways. Simultaneously, these issues and Strauss's approach to them provide the key to a fuller understanding of Strauss's not easily accessible work. By offering a perspective that is at thispoint not available, this project will productively contribute to current scholarship on Strauss, while always bearing in mind the systematic import of his work." "Decolonising social norms change: An analysis of the politics of knowledge production in relation to Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting and child marriage" "Maria Martin de Almagro Iniesta" "Department of Conflict and Development Studies" "Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and child marriage are framed within development discourse as major causes of gendered health inequalities, resulting in significant investment to reduce them. For 15 years, the main theoretical framework for tackling these issues has been social norms change. Yet, anthropologists and postcolonial scholars have critiqued dominant social norms change models and interventions for their lack of sensitivity to cultural dynamics, and for imposing Eurocentric priorities and concepts, reflecting neocolonial hierarchies in knowledge production. Hence, calls have been made to ‘decolonise’ global health by opening up knowledge production to more diverse perspectives. Such calls, however, ignore how decolonial critiques of social norms and alternative approaches have existed for decades but fail to get traction in the marketplace of policy-making advice. This project aims to understand the politics of knowledge production in relation to social norms change as applied to FGM/C and child marriage, to produce evidence to inform strategies to promote interventions which are effective but which also align with beneficiaries’ concerns, values and worldviews. Methods include a participatory analysis of such a decolonial approach by NGO Grandmother Project and surveys and interviews with academics and development actors. Outputs will be 2 articles, a special issue, short online pieces, 3-4 webinars, a strategy guide for practitioners, and a conference." "The politics of love: urban development, intimacy and the future in the northern Kunene Region, Namibia" "Steven Van Wolputte" "Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa" "The most recent UN Habitat report (2010) has drawn attention to the fact that Africa is urbanizing at an incredible speed, and to the fact that the process of urbanization is exacerbating the already high levels of inequality on the continent. At the same time, Africa has caught the attention of global investors and speculators: one speaks of a “new scramble for Africa” (Carmody 2011) that involves both the old and emerging world powers. Made possible by new technologies of prospecting and extracting, and propelled by the surging prices of resources such as oil, iron ore, copper, and other metals on the world market, a neo-liberal policy model is rapidly replacing existing “dependency” models. Namibia is no exception, and recent discoveries of offshore oil and large deposits of iron ore are already having their impact on urban-rural dynamics, and on the lay out and ""character"" of the town of Opuwo, a small but booming town in the north of the country. But these discoveries also affect urbanites in the expectations they have of the (immediate) future and in the ways they strategize, manage, engage in and “live” their closest relationships, ranging from friendship bonds to kinship and sexual relations. This is the question underlying this research proposal: how do global flows of capital, and neoliberal economics and policies affect the “micro-physics” of life in a small African city?" "Historical revisionism, revision history and alternative online media eco-systems in Japan—a socio-political analysis of nationalist contestation and political propaganda in the digital age" "Dimitri Vanoverbeke" "Japanese Studies, Leuven" "Social media has over the past decade seen an undeniable increase in politicization and subsequent association with populist right-wing political actors. As a result, specialized jargon such as 'alt-right', 'fachosphère' or the Japanese 'Netto-Uyoku' (lit. 'Net-Right')—referring to a phenomenon of Internet-facilitated neo-nationalism—have in their respective languages entered the mainstream discourse. In the case of Japan, one pillar of various strands of neo-nationalism is the dissemination of highly revisionist takes on wartime history into public spaces, with a dual purpose of nationalist self-affirmation and xenophobe ‘othering’. As revisionist narratives spread from minor sub-cultural spaces into widespread platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, that process has increasingly flourished due to the inter-connectivity of social media. This PhD project will contribute to existing literature on that online strand of Japanese neo-nationalism by 1. bringing to light how neo-nationalist ideologues, within the technical and ethical boundaries of two mainstream online media platforms (YouTube and Wikipedia), attempt to push forms of historical revisionism as a form of political propaganda, and 2. revealing how, from a technical perspective, these platforms—built almost completely on user-generated and user-moderated content—facilitate the crossing of platform and language-dependent borders to reach audiences that succeed the initial inner circles of those ideologues."