Research Strategy 2020-2023 at the Church History Section
- Targeted development and strengthening of the activities in the four research fields that reflect the Section’s academic breadth, based on of the overall aim of approaching church history as a tension between thought and tangible materiality.
- Development of the theological and interdisciplinary methodological foundation for the subject area
- Strengthening research collaboration and exchanges, both within and beyond the Section.
- Ancient Church and Late Antiquity
Isolation, sociality, space and movement in the culture of theology and religious history; Christianity and mediality.
Topics: Processions and urban spaces in late antiquity; principles of isolation in early monastic culture; musical understanding and the use of classical rhetoric in early Christianity; piety culture and ritual practices.
- High and Late Middle Ages
Theology and philosophy; academic and religious culture; Christianity and holy wars.
Topics: Medieval theology and philosophy and its interactions with academic and religious culture (e.g. the culture of the orders); the Reformation’s roots in scholastic theology, mystical theology and Renaissance humanism; the Cistercians; the Crusades, missions and power politics in German and Nordic Middle Ages.
- Early Modern Era
The interplay between theology, philosophy, historiography, history of ideas, art, music, architecture, law and psychiatry between 1500 and 1800.
Topics: Luther’s theology, the Reformation in Germany and Denmark, Luther reception and the history of Lutheranism in Denmark; theological aesthetics in Protestant culture: the relationship between theology, poetry and music; interdisciplinary studies in privacy, 1500–1800; the relationship between Lutheran theology and law during the Enlightenment; the Moravians in and outside Denmark; the relationship between Lutheranism and psychiatry in the 18th century.
- 19th and 20th century
Global church history, mission history, church and national identity; holy wars; religion and secularism; cultural heritage; theology and gender; the reception history of the Reformation.
Topics: Christianity in Nigeria with a particular focus on Bachama; studies in African Church historiography; nationalism and historiography in Orthodox Church communities; the relationship between nationalism, Christianity and the notion of holy war in contemporary Western currents of thought and political positions; understandings of Christianity and politics in Denmark with special reference to theological arguments for and against secularisation; female theologians and the ordination of women; Danish and German Luther research and Luther reception.