ANNOUNCEMENT ON SIGTUNA 2021 ISMRC CONFERENCE

The Conference Planning Team and ISMRC Advisory Board regrettably announces the cancellation of the ONSITE portion of the planned 2021 ISMRC Conference in Sigtuna, Sweden.  This has been a hard decision based on the continued impact of the Covid-19 global pandemic on international travel and health & safety concerns. We apologize of any inconvenience this change and delayed notification causes. Due to this decision and its impact on the conference structure, we will instead hold a modified one day event ONLINE. 
 
  
This virtual event “Rethinking Religion, Media & Secularities” will take place on August 4th 2021 featuring panels of select papers and presentations on the planned conference theme.  This event will be focused around a keynote talk by Professor of Communication Marwan Kraidy, Northwestern University in Qatar.  Full details of this event and program will be announced by May 28th on the conference website. 
  
We look forward to returning to a full conference format in 2023 when the next ISMRC Conference will take place in Bochum, Germany in conjunction with the Center for Religious Studies at Ruhr University-Bochum. In the meantime the ISMRC board will be working with regional groups encouraging the planning of ISMRC-related events in 2021 & 2022.
 

For questions, please contact conference@ismrc.org.

Refund of registration fees
The registration fee will be fully refunded to all participants. To be able to refund your fee we kindly ask you to send an email to Helena Carlsson helena.carlsson@sigtunastiftelsen.se at the financial department of the Sigtuna Foundation with the information needed to make the refund. We need the following:

SWIFT/BIC CODE (identifying your bank), and
IBAN (identifying your account in this bank)

We will do our best to handle the refunds as soon as possible.

The globalization of our lifeworld has brought attention to how we think about religion and non-religious contexts. The existence of secularity in contemporary society and culture is contested in many fields in which scholars of media, religion and culture studies engage. The 2020 ISMRC conference theme “Rethinking Media, Religion and Secularities”, seeks to interrogate these debates and the role media plays in communicating and mediating secularity in contemporary society.  The conference, which represents the biennial meeting of the International Society for Media, Religion and Culture, will explore these issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives. International participants from such disciplines as media studies, journalism, religious studies, anthropology and sociology of religion, as well as history, literature and public policy are welcome.

Call for Papers: Rethinking Media, Religion and Secularities

Keynote speakers include:

Professor Linda Woodhead, Lancaster University

Professor Marwan Kraidy, University of Pennsylvania

Associate Professor Titus Hjelm, University of Helsinki

For further information about the theme and submission of papers and panels see the call for papers. The conference page will be updated with further information in November. For questions concerning the conference program etc please email conference@ismrc.org.

Deadline for Paper proposals: 14 January 2020.
Submission of paper proposals should be made through: abstracts@ismrc.org. 

Acceptance of abstracts will be noticed earliest Monday 9th of March 2020. 

Venue

The conference will be held at the Sigtuna Foundation, Sigtuna, Sweden. Sigtuna is a small town situated between Stockholm and Uppsala, located only 17 minutes from the Stockholm Arlanda International Airport, and about 45 km from Stockholm City Centre. Sigtuna is a town with a long history, established around 980 A.D., as has the Sigtuna Foundation that was inaugurated in 1917. The Sigtuna Foundation has a centenarian history of hosting meetings in the borderland between science and scholarship, culture, society, politics and faith-based communities, as well as organizing a spectrum of international conferences in collaboration with universities and other organizations from many parts of the world.

You find mor more information about accommodation at the Sigtuna Foundation and other accommodation options in Sigtuna here. 

For practical questions concerning the venue, please contact: karin.sallander@sigtunastiftelsen.se