Seminar in Celebration of Nils Holger Petersen’s 80th Birthday
Resonance: Engaging Liturgies and the Arts
Seminar in Celebration of Nils Holger Petersen’s 80th Birthday
Mathematician, composer, theologian. Scholar of Mozart, medieval ‘liturgical drama’ and the resonances of medieval cult and culture. Prolific author and editor, research leader, teacher and mentor.
Nils Holger Petersen, emeritus associate professor of church history, turns 80 on 27 April 2026. He will be celebrated with a seminar on his birthday, featuring facets of his scholarly interests and collaborations presented by colleagues and collaborators. Nils Holger will give a rendering of red threads running through his research, and the celebration concludes with a reception and a musical intermezzo.
Nils Holger has decisively shaped ‘Christianity and the Arts’ – a field of research and teaching which has for many years been a hallmark of the Section for Church History. For the Centre for Privacy Studies he has been a strong inspiration through his seminal work as director of the first Danish National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Church History, the Centre for the Study of the Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals (2002-10) which pioneered interdisciplinary research collaboration through exchanges between church historians, historians of art and architecture, musicologists and historians of literature.
Program
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14.00-14.15 |
Margit Anne Petersen and Mette Birkedal Bruun: Welcome |
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14.15-14.35 |
Miri Rubin: Dramatic encounters: Ecclesia and Synagoga in Verse and on Stage |
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14.35-14.55 |
Nils Arne Pedersen: Reenactment of the Mass of St Ansgar in late medieval Ribe |
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14.55-15.15 |
Coffee break |
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15.15-15.35 |
Kristoffer Garne: Can hymns be modern – and should they? |
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15.35-16.05 |
Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen and Sven Rune Havsteen: Tuned to Blood and Tears |
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16.05-16.35 |
Svein Aage Christoffersen, Leonora Onarheim and Margunn Sandal: Sensoriness and Transcendence: The Holy and the Sublime in a religious-aesthetic perspective |
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16.35-16.55 |
Margrethe Syrstad Andås: A Much-Neglected Topic: The Archaeology of Rites and Liturgical Practices |
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16.55-17.15 |
Nils Holger Petersen: Appropriating Medieval Liturgical Chant as Art Music: A Church Historian’s Perspective |
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17.15 |
Reception with musical intermezzo |
This seminar celebrates Nils Holger’s rich and multifaceted scholarly contribution.
It features talks by some of his many collaborators and Nils Holger’s own rendering of red threads running through his research.
We look forward to a joyous afternoon.
The event takes place at the University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Theology, Karen Blixens Vej 16, 2300 København S.
The seminar takes places in room 4A.0.68, and the reception takes place in room 7C.0.02 (Markedspladsen).