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Political Theologies of a Democratic Common Life  24-26 March 2025  New College, University of Oxford  Event Description: Religion has a complex role in shaping our political landscape, with the power to either fuel division or serve as a resource for a democratic common life. The fifth Political Theologies conference gathers scholars and practitioners to discuss how […]

A group of theologians and professors from Stellenbosch University and Åbo Akademi University gathered around Dr Isaac H. T. Balie, who was sitting in the yard of the Moravian missionary station under a big tree. Dr Balie told us about the history of the station and the story of Moravian missionary Georg Smith, and a […]

In the image below, you can see a picture of a mosque and this mosque is Mosque Shafee which is situated in the Bo-Kaap area of Cape Town. I found the mosque to be beautiful and it was interesting to see the building because in Finland mosques are not recognisable in the same way from […]

Walking along the streets of Cape Town you can see a beige building with shops on the street level. Only a star at the gate will indicate what can be found inside those walls. We are being greeted by a woman, perhaps in her fifties. Her hair had traces of a life lived. But what […]

What constitutes a religion is a frequent question with many aspects to bear in mind, and it is a question that has been spinning in my head for a long time as well. So, having first visited different religions steaming from the Abrahamic faith in Finland we had a solid foundation to compare, and contrast […]

Historical, Contemporary, and Comparative Perspectives Research conference in Turku/Åbo, 29-30 January 2025 It is our great pleasure to invite you to the first conference in Finland on antisemitism, organized by the Antisemitism Undermining Democracy Project and the Inez and Julius Polin Institute for Theological Research. In a time where Jewish communities and individuals around the […]

“The situation in South Africa is complex.” was said by just about everyone who had a speech of any kind during the days of our course in South Africa. The complexity was also often used as an answer to questions. “Well, you know, that’s very complex here.” And those answers that referred to the complexity […]

The theological course Abraham Goes Global is a cooperation between Åbo Akademi University and Stellenbosch University (South Africa) funded by the Finnish National Agency for Education and The Polin Institute 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. The aims are to widen the perception of theology to cross boundaries of religion at both universities, to exchange expertise on contextualised […]

Need time to finalize a book manuscript? Research stint at the Polin Institute for theological research within Åbo Akademi University, Finland The Polin Institute is a growing international center of theological research in Finland. We announce two research stints of maximum six months between the beginning of March 2025 and the end of August 2025 […]