ReSpell is more than happy to announce the organisation of the International Conference: 'Anthropology of Religion in Transition: Transreligiosity, Global Shifts and the Future in the Field', to be held at the Deparment of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece, 15-16 May 2026.
Over the last decades, anthropologists have documented how religious and spiritual practices increasingly transcend institutional, doctrinal, and national boundaries. These developments invite us to revisit the very foundations of the
field of the anthropology of religion – its methods, theoretical premises, and epistemological commitments – and to ask how the anthropology of religion can once again become central to anthropological inquiry. The International Conference, organized by the research project Religion, Spirituality and Well-being. A Comparative Approach of Transreligiosity and Crisis in Southern Europe (ReSpell, ref. 2022.01229.PTDC), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and co-organized by the Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean, seeks to reimagine the anthropology of religion in light of the conceptual and ethnographic transformations shaping our world today.
The conference aims to explore how people navigate overlapping religious, spiritual and secular worlds, and how these crossings challenge conventional understandings of belief, identity and the sacred, among others. At the same time, we wish to confront the institutional and disciplinary challenges faced by anthropologists of religion today, in Greece, southern Europe, and globally. We furthermore invite reflections on the future of the anthropology of
religion, with the concept of ‘transreligiosity’ as a starting point, and rethink how we study, theorize and engage with religion today. Anthropologists increasingly encounter practices and experiences that move fluidly and elastically across religious and spiritual contexts, challenging the analytical boundaries that once defined the field. Transreligiosity – as an emerging and innovative anthropological concept (Panagiotopoulos and Roussou 2022;
Roussou and Panagiotopoulos 2023) – captures these crossings and transformations, offering new ways to study plurality, coexistence, transition, transformation and meaning in our globalized, transnational, contemporary worlds.
We welcome ethnographic and/or theoretical contributions that open a dialogue about the disciplinary, methodological, and institutional challenges faced by anthropologists and social scientists of contemporary religiosity. How can we conceptualize religion and spirituality when/if they no longer fit into established categories? What kinds of ethnographic and epistemological tools are needed to make sense of religious fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, plurality? How can the anthropology of religion regain a central role within the anthropological discipline more broadly? How do religious and spiritual movements intersect with issues of power, inequality, and global crisis (economic, environmental, political)?
We invite paper proposals (up to 250 words) and/or session proposals (up to 4 papers) that engage with these questions.
Possible themes include (but are not limited to):
• new ethnographies of religious and transreligious practices reflecting upon the future of the anthropology of
religion;
• theoretical and methodological reflections on studying religion anthropologically in contexts of fluidity, elasticity
and change;
• intersections between the anthropology of religion and other subfields (e.g. medical, political, historical,
environmental);
• institutional and pedagogical reflections on the field’s position and future.
Please send your proposal with your name and affiliation to
cmVzcGVsbCAhIHByb2plY3QgfCBnbWFpbCAhIGNvbQ==, until the 11 of January 2026.
The official language of the conference is English, and registration will be free.
We very much look forward to receiving your proposals!
Also check out other Business events in Mytilini, Conferences in Mytilini, Contests in Mytilini.
