Speakers of the 15. International Conference


Prof. Dr. Ulrike Auga

Ulrike Auga is a transdisciplinary Religious Studies and Cultural Theory Scholar and Gender Expert. She was born in East-Berlin in 1964. As a student she was participating in the struggle of the peaceful revolution 1989 against the East German dictatorship. In face of that she had become involved with Feminist Liberation Theologies. She became interested in and critical of political transitions and issues of justice, solidarity, gender and religion. She lived and worked several years in Johannesburg, Bamako and Jerusalem.

Today she is a Professor for Theology and Gender Studies at Humboldt University Berlin, Faculty of Protestant Theology, Department for Religious Studies, Intercultural Theology, and Ecumenism. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersection between Religious Studies, Philosophy of Religion and Gender, Queer and Postcolonial Theory. She is the Co-Editor of „Religion & Gender. The online journal for the systematic and interdisciplinary study of gender and religion". Her publications include Theory of Religion as a Theory of Knowledge. Investigations in Religion and Gender; 2014. (forthcoming); and the edited volumes, Fundamentalism and Gender: Scripture - Body - Community, 2013 (forthcoming), and with Christina von Braun, Gender in Conflicts. Palestine- Israel- Germany, 2006.

Research interests:

  • Religion, gender, nationalism in transition contexts (South Africa, Israel/Palestinian Territories, East Germany, i.e. in Truth and Reconciliation Committees)
  • Religion and (epistemic) violence: Critique of construction and regulation of religious and secular knowledge about gender, collectivities and life
  • Interdependencies of Bio-Politics and Religion (e.g. HIV/AIDS discourse, health- and sexual rights as human rights, sexuality and reproduction)
  • Developing a Critical Bio-Theology, which is concerned with emerging and consistent theological-political categories and issues of corporative social imaginary with regard to the intersectional categories gender and religion, focussing on globalisation critique, new social movements, religious movements and their possibilities for subject formation and agency

 

Prof. Dr. Musa W. Dube

Since 2008, Musa W. Dube has been a Professor at the University of Botswana, teaching New Testament Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. From 2002 to 2003 she was a WCC consultant, training  churches and theological institutions in Africa  on mainstreaming HIV&AIDS and gender in their programs.   Prof Dube has published extensively and is a world sought speaker, who has given papers in more than thirty countries.

Prof  Dube is a member of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, the Society of Biblical Literature and the United Methodist Church.  Her research interests include: HIV and AIDS, Gender, Translation and Postcolonial Studies in religious education. In 2011 The Humboldt Foundation  awarded Prof Dube the Friedrich Wilhelm Research Award.

 

Prof. Dr. Mayra Rivera Rivera

Mayra Rivera Rivera is Associate Professor for Theology and Latina/o Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She finished her PhD in 2005 in Theological and Religious Studies at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. She is part of the editorial board of the "Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion” and the "Harvard Theological Review”. Among her publications are:

  • The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God
  • Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality and Theology (with Stephen Moore)
  • Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (with Catherine Keller and Michael Nausner)

Research interests:

 

  • Post-colonialism
  • feminist Theology
  • Latina Studies
  • Gender, Race, and Transformation Latina Theory

 

 

Prof Dr. Kwok Pui-Lan

Kwok Pui-Lan is the William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA. She finished her PhD at Harvard University. Furthermore, she received honorary doctorates from Kampen Theological University (Netherlands) and Uppsala University (Sweden). In 2011, she was President of the American Academy of Religion.

Research interests:

  • (Asian) Feminist Theology
  • Hermeneutics
  • World Christianity
  • Post-colonialism
  • Religion and culture
  • Asian Religions

 

 

Prof. Dr. Jörg Rieger

Jörg Rieger is Professor of Constructive Theology at the Perkins School of Theology which is part of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. In his works, Rieger develops an anti-imperialistic and anti-colonialistic theological hermeneutic. He reinterprets the ministry of Jesus against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. In addition to his advancement of liberation theologies, Prof. Rieger works on postcolonial and postmodern theories with a special focus on international integration and processes of globalization. Prof. Dr. Jörg Rieger is ordained pastor of the United Methodist Church.

Selected publications:

  • Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (2012) (with Kwok Pui-Lan).
  • Traveling: Christian Explorations of Daily Living (2011).
  • Globalization and Theology (2010).
  • No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (2009).
  • Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (2007).

Research interests:

  • systematic, constructive, historical and contemporary theologies, liberation theologies as well as theology and religion in social contexts
  • anti-imperialistic theory and critical theory of financial markets at the points of intersection with theology, social- and cultural sciences and business theory
  • linking and advancement of theory and activist strategies for the option for the poor

 

Anne-Marie Korte

Anne-Marie Korte is Professor of Religion, Gender, and Modernity at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and Scientific Directorof the Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion. Since 2011, she is initiator and Editor in Chief of Religion and Gender(religionandgender.org), online journal for the systematic study of gender and religion in an interdisciplinary perspective.

Among her publications are: Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity (Harrisburg 2003); Women & Miracle Stories: A Multidisciplinary Exploration (Leiden 2004); The Boundaries of Monotheism: Interdisciplinary Explorations into the Foundations of Western Monotheism ( Leiden 2009).

Research Interests:

  • postcolonial, post-secular and queer perspectives in the study of religion
  • gender, sexuality and human materiality in contemporary images and performances accused of blasphemy and sacrilege


 

Dr. Dr. Sr. Teresa Forcades i Vila

Sr. Teresa Forcades was born in Barcelona in 1966. She was a medical student at the University of Barcelona where she also finished her PhD in public health. She trained in the USA as a specialist in internal medicine (State University of New York). Furthermore, she obtained a Master degree in divinity (Harvard University) as well as a PhD in fundamental theology (Facultad de Teología de Catalunya). Sr. Teresa Forcades is a Benedictine nun since 1997.

Research interests:

  • Feminist Theology
  • Theological anthropology
  • Liberation Theology
  • Abuses of the health care system

 

 

Prof. Dr. Janet Jacobsen

Janet R. Jakobsen is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College, where she has also served as Dean for Faculty Diversity and Development.  She studies religious ethics and public policy with a particular focus on social movements related to religion, gender and sexuality.  She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics.  With Ann Pellegrini she co-wrote of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance and co-edited Secularisms, and with Elizabeth Castelli she co-edited Interventions: Academics and Activists Respond to Violence.  She has also taught as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University and Wesleyan University and held fellowships from the American Association of University Women, the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard Divinity School. Before entering the academy, she was a policy analyst and organizer in Washington, D.C.

Research interests:

  • religion, gender, and sexuality in American public life
  • social movements and feminist alliance politics
  • feminist and queer ethics
  • global issues of economics and violence
  • activism