Europa-Universität Flensburg announces closer cooperation with the Von Hügel Institute at St Edmunds College

The international conference Conflict Resolution and Interreligious Encounter took place on 5-8 September, jointly organised by the Von Hügel Institute and the Wasatia Graduate School at the Europa-Universität Flensburg (EUF). The conference served as a collaborative opportunity to examine questions of justice, reconciliation, political ethics, and interreligious dialogue, most especially those relevant to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities.

Students participating in the Wasatia Doctoral College at the EUF travelled to St Edmund's College to attend the conference. The doctoral cohort, made up primarily of students from Israel, Palestine, Albania, Ireland, and Germany, discussed questions of religious conflict with members of the Cambridge Divinity Faculty. The conference focussed primarily on the use of scriptural reasoning as a dialogical training method that can, in the words of VHI Research Associate and conference co-organiser Dr Zeina Barakat, 'build empathetic perception of the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, the Koran, and the New Testament.'

Other conference highlights included a book presentation by Professor Esra Özyürek, Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values and Director of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, regarding her 2023 publication, Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Post-War Germany; a guided visit to the Cambridge Central Mosque with Dr Timothy Winter, Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies; a hybrid lecture on ‘Religion, Memory, and Legacy,’ with Dr Rev Gary Mason, Director of Rethinking Conflict; and a Scriptural Reasoning session introduced and moderated by Dr Daniel Weiss, Polonsky-Coexist Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies. The conference culminated in a public keynote by Professor David Ford OBE, Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity, entitled ‘On Being Healthily Plural: Scriptural Reasoning and Its Analogues’. 

Thanks especially to the extensive work of Prof Ralf Wüstenberg, Senior Research Associate at the VHI, and Dr Barakat, the convening provided fertile ground to discuss possible forms of cooperation between the two institutions. At the end of his visit to St Edmund's College, which included a meeting with the Director of the Von Hügel Institute Dr Vittorio Montemaggi, EUF Vice-President for Europe and International Affairs Professor Dr Ulrich Glassman announced that he would 'very much like to expand th[e] collaboration institutionally.'

Dr Montemaggi is delighted to welcome this collaboration, which aims to offer researchers, especially young academics, the opportunity to use the unique interdisciplinary environments offered by both institutions to enrich their research. 

Photo, from left: Prof Ralf Wüstenberg (VHI and Wasatia Graduate School), Prof. Dr. Ulrich Glassmann (EUF Vice-President for Europe and International Affairs), Catherine Arnold (Master of St Edmund’s College) and Dr Zeina Barakat (VHI and Wasatia Graduate School). Photo credit Tristan Selden.