SCiReNA

SCiReNA is the continuation of a collaboration that started in 2017, in order to pursue scholarship from a non-Anglo-American, yet European perspective. The main goal of this project is to organize three short Spring schools on Science and Religion in Spain, Greece and Poland with the following aims in mind: Firstly, to test a short version of a syllabus on science and religion, formerly supported by the INSBS, in different geographical and cultural (and non-English speaking) settings; secondly to test the theses of a recent project and volume on ‘Science, Religion and Nationalism’, which appeared in Routledge in 2023; and finally to explore local information for a new project on Science, Religion and Atheism.

The first Spring School  took place in Athens, Greece with the institutional support of the National Hellenic Foundation and the University of Athens, on the 20th and 21 st of April, 2024. The second took place in Poland, under the aegis of Fundacja Pro Futuro Theologiae, on the 4th and 5 th of June 2024, and the third in Donostia/San Sebastian, in the Basque Country, Spain, as part of courses offered by the Summer Courses Foundation of the UPV/EHU,the 20th and 21st of June 2024.

SciReNa brings together a number of elements. It furthers research on how to pedagogically advance the diffusion of the latest research on science and religion to audiences often unaware of state-of-the-art scholarship. The so-called ‘conflict thesis’, however debunked from academic work, is still largely present in the public sphere, and we hope to use this experiment as a way, not only to challenge the views of the students, but also to learn from their a priori approaches (often related to local histories and narratives). SciReNA also combines with research on pedagogy by the Principal Investigator and the Co-Investigator, as well as some of the major approaches developed by the INSBS to audiences underrepresented in the network; namely non-English speaking, European audiences. Finally, it uses the pedagogical framework already developed as a way to trigger new research, particularly on the new science-religion-atheism project.