The eighth annual conference of the European Academy of Religion took place in Vienna this summer. The event was held from 8 to 12 July 2025 in the main building of the University of Vienna and brought together over a thousand researchers and representatives of academic institutions from around the world. This year’s conference had a cross-cutting theme of “Religion and Sociocultural Transformation: European Perspectives and Beyond”.
This year’s event was organized by the Research Centre “Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society” at the University of Vienna. The conference was held under the patronage of the European Parliament, demonstrating that even in times of secularisation and religious indifference, religious studies remain an important intellectual platform.
The keynote speeches at EuARe-2025 set the intellectual tone for the entire conference, outlining the most pressing challenges facing Europe today. Franz Fischler, former European Commissioner and President of the European Forum Alpbach, opened the meeting. In his speech on the importance of religion for social unity in the EU, he noted that religious traditions can be a resource for overcoming social divisions in times of global crisis.
Besides the plenary reports, the conference featured over two hundred panel reports discussing issues such as the relationship between religion and democracy, post-confessional identities, environmental ethics, new forms of interreligious dialogue, and contemporary artistic interpretations of the sacred. Ukrainian researchers also contributed to these discussions: The programme includes presentations by Ivan Almes, Dennis Brylov, Dmytro Vovk, Oksana Prokopyuk, and others.
This demonstrates the active integration of Ukrainian researchers into the global religious studies community.
For more information about this year’s conference of the European Academy of Religions, please visit our website at the following link – https://www.academic-initiative.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Yevropeiska_akademiya_relihiy.pdf
