Centre for the Study of Religion in Society, Culture and Law (SCALA)

This area studies how religious beliefs, practices, and institutions both shape and are shaped by social, political, and cultural life. Approaching religion as a dynamic, lived experience, public discourse, and global affairs, it employs interdisciplinary methods to examine intersections with identity, aesthetics, power, ethics, and belonging across historical and contemporary contexts.

Head of Area: Associate Professor Jesper Petersen leads the “Non-Muslim Islam” research project, funded by the Sapere Aude grant. His anthropological work focuses on how Islam is produced and consumed by non-Muslims. Petersen also researches Islamic feminism, LGBTQ-Islam, and Danish Muslims’ Sharia practices, grounding his insights in fieldwork and ethnographic methods.

This area investigates how religion is produced, governed, and made knowable within legal and state frameworks. It analyzes how states engage with religious communities via legislation, administrative policies, judicial rulings, and symbolic resources—especially regarding Islam in European contexts. The aim is to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and deliver empirically grounded, conceptually rigorous insights into religion’s evolving role in law and governance.

Head of Area: Associate Professor Niels Valdemar Vinding holds his position at the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Theology. He chaired the project Producing Sharia in Context (2021–2025), funded by the Danish Independent Research Fund, which investigates how sharia—Islamic law, ethics, and practice—is shaped by and interacts with Danish and European social contexts. Among his notable works is Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe: Denmark (Brill, 2020), illuminating legal frameworks surrounding Islam in Denmark.