Projects
Interrogating Islamic Roads to Conviviality: Ethical and Religious Practices of Tolerance in Relation to Identity among Muslim Minorities in Belgium Ghent University
This project examines conviviality as an everyday practice of bridging religious and cultural difference from the perspective of Muslim minorities in Belgium living in the cities of Brussels, Antwerp and Liège. It examines the modalities in which Islamic frames of reference and ethical sensibilities are mobilized by individuals when striving for harmonious convivial living together across religious difference. First, the project compares ...
Towards a blueprint for successful collaborative writing and revision in higher education: the interplay of instruction, interaction and writing processes and  task complexity and their relation to text quality. KU Leuven
The importance of atheism, suspicion, and ideology critique in Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion and its relevance for religio-secular conflicts. KU Leuven
This project seeks to provide a positive and original contribution to contemporary religio-secular and the wider scholarship surrounding Ricoeur by drawing upon the following aspects of Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion: Firstly, this project will examine Ricoeur’s hermeneutical method and the role that language, culture, and tradition plays in his philosophy of religion. A second area of inquiry will be made into the critical tools that ...
Anti-Islamism and Rejection of Public Religion in Western Europe. A Comparative Study of Anti-Religiosity in 21 Western European Countries, 1990-2008 KU Leuven
This study comprises of a series of theoretically informed empirical analyses of anti-religiosity in Western Europe. In the West, atheism, secularism and anti-religiosity gain more and more attention in the media and in scientific literature. Mostly, this intense debate is being held between popular-scientists, theologians, philosophers, politicians and journalists. What scarcely attracts attention is a more empirical understanding of these ...
The importance of the freudian psychoanalysis in Vergote's theory construction in his psychology of religion. KU Leuven
THE ROLE OF THE FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS IN VERGOTE'S PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
Antoon Vergote (1921-2013) got his first assignment to lecture at the KU Leuven in 1954 and continued lecturing until 1987 at the Higher Institute of Philosophy and at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational sciences, where he founded in 1958 the Center for the Psychology of Religion. He became an internationally recognized authority in ...
Mapping religion and worldview-based forms of local social support KU Leuven
In this doctoral research, which is part of the broader Soligion project, problems concerning the definition and selection of religion and worldview-based forms of local social support are clarified. Second the daily practice of religion and worldview-based forms of local social support focused on people in poverty are mapped for five Flemish cities and we investigate how these organisations look at solidarity in daily practice. The research ...
Sabbatical Wim Coudenys: Religion vs Modernity? Orthodox-Catholic Relations in the Russian Emigration, 1917-1960 KU Leuven
Since the 19th century, religious and national identities (seemingly) are in opposition to one another; whereas the latter seen as a sign of modernity, religious identity is dismissed as pre-modern. In reality, however, national and religious identities co-exist, often in symbiosis. This was also the case in ‘unmodern’ Russia, where the exclusive identification of Orthodoxy with Russia, as opposed to ‘Polish’ Catholicism and ‘Ukrainian’ ...
Theology of Religions as a Process of Discernment: A Critical Appraisal of the Dialectical Tension between Jacques Dupuis' Theology of Religions and the Theology of Dominus Iesus. KU Leuven
The current theological scholarship on Jacques Dupuis' paradigm and Dominus Iesus concentrate either on a positive appraisal of their positions on the one hand, or on a critical assessment of certain aspects in them on the other hand. While acknowledging the contributions made by the existing corpus, my project seeks to go beyond the appreciators, faultfinders and one-sided approaches to both Dupuis’ paradigm and the Declaration. The ...
Role of religion in political decision making Ghent University
My research asks why and how does religion and culture play a role in the political decision
making in the South-east Nigeria and in other Multicultural parts of the world like, Flemish,
Belgium and Toronto, Canada.
The purpose or my research is twofold. Firstly, to explore the overall changes in political
decision-making, and why they are influenced by the role religion plays as a whole. This is ...