Events

MODERATOR

Prof  Kenneth Dean, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

 
ABSTRACT

The interactions between religion and globalization have taken many forms over the past 20 years. The future of these interactions will be shaped by new forces, such as the rise of religious nationalism, the ongoing project of seculariszation, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on religious life across the region and the challenges to religious and cultural heritage preservation. This roundtable discusses these themes and introduces new approaches to the study of these issues that have been developed in the Religion and Globalisation Research Cluster in collaboration with international research centres in Europe, the US, and Japan.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Carola E. Lorea is Research Fellow in the Religion and Globalisation Cluster of the Asia Research Institute in National University of Singapore. She is interested in sound, Tantra, oral traditions and popular religious movements in South Asia, particularly eastern India, Bangladesh and the Andaman Islands. Her monograph Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman (Brill, 2016) is the result of a four-year travel along ethnography with Baul practitioners. She was a research fellow at IIAS (Leiden), Gonda Foundation and the South Asia Institute at University of Heidelberg. She is the founding editor of the research blog CoronAsur: Religion & Covid-19. Her current book project on soundscapes of religion and displacement is focused on the Matua community and its flows of preachers, performers, religious items and ideas across the Bay of Bengal.

Kenneth Dean is Head of the Chinese Studies Department, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Research Cluster Leader for Religion and Globalisation, NUS. His recent publications include Chinese Epigraphy of Singapore, 2 vols. (with Hue Guan Thye), Singapore: NUS Press 2017, Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plains, 2 vols. (with Zheng Zhenman), Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010, Epigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: Quanzhou Prefecture (3 vols), Xinghua Prefecture, Fuzhou: Fujian Peoples’ Publishing House, 2004, 1995, Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China, Princeton: 1998; Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China, Princeton 1993; and First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot (with Brian Massumi), Autonomedia, New York, 1992. He directed Bored in Heaven: A Film about Ritual Sensation (Dean 2010), an 80-minute documentary film on ritual celebrations around Chinese New Year in Putian, Fujian, China.

Peter van der Veer was Director of the Department for the Study of Religious Diversity at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religion and Ethnic Diversity from 2002 until 2021. He has taught anthropology at Free University in Amsterdam, Utrecht University, and University of Pennsylvania. In 1992, he was appointed as Professor of Comparative Religion and Founding Director of the Research Center in Religion and Society in the Social Science Faculty of the University of Amsterdam. He served as the Dean of the Social Science Faculty, Dean of the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research at Amsterdam, and Director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam and Chairman of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, both in Leiden. In 2004, he was appointed as University Professor at Large at Utrecht University, a position from which he retired in 2019. He has held visiting positions at LSE, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, EHESS in Paris, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New School in New York, and National University of Singapore. Most recently, he served as the Provost’s Distinguished Visiting Professor at University of Chicago, where he delivered the 2019 Annual Vivekananda Lecture. He also received the Hendrik Muller Award for his social science study of religion. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Van der Veer works on religion and nationalism in Asia and Europe. Among his major publications are Gods on Earth (LSE Monographs, 1988), Religious Nationalism (University of California Press, 1994), Imperial Encounters (Princeton University Press, 2001), The Modern Spirit of Asia. The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India (Princeton University Press, 2013), and The Value of Comparison (The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures, Duke University Press 2016).

R. Michael Feener is Professor of Cross-regional Studies at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, and Associate Member of the History Faculty at the University of Oxford. He was formerly Research Leader of the Religion and Globalisation Research Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore, and the Sultan of Oman Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He has published extensively in the fields of Islamic studies and Southeast Asian history, as well as on post-disaster reconstruction, religion and development. He is currently Head of the Maldives Heritage Survey.

ARI20 ANNIVERSARY ROUNDTABLE SERIES

The ARI20 Anniversary Roundtable Series marks the founding of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore in 2001. The series celebrates our current scholarship while exploring how these themes and topics continue to inspire new trajectories of research. The ARI20 Anniversary Roundtable Series concludes with the convening of a final roundtable featuring the Institute’s current research cluster leaders, who will discuss ARI’s role in charting future humanities and social science research on Asia. While the virtual roundtable format arises from pandemic-related necessity, it will enable ARI alumni and partners around the world to join the discussion on the Institute’s research directions and prospects.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.