AGS Launches Seminar Series on Religion and International Relations, Open to the Public

On February 3-4, the American Graduate School in Paris will host the first in a series of seminars on the theme of Religion and International Relations. These seminars will seek to explore the links between religious beliefs and global politics. As John Ikenberry, an International Relations theorist at Princeton University, states: “Religious movements can reinforce state authority or undermine it, and religion can reinforce the territorial boundaries of state or mobilize loyalties that cut across borders.”

These seminars are organised by Manlio Graziano, AGS's specialist of geopolitics and geopolitics of religion, and Christophe Grannec, a sociologist of religions and a member of a research group on this subject at the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS). This initiative emerged in the aftermath of last year's successful AGS Conference on the theme: "The Complexity of Religion in International Relations: Theoretical, Legal and Geopolitical Perspectives", organized AGS graduate students under the supervision of Professor Ruchi Anand.

This first seminar will focus on the theme of "Religion and State: A Troubled Relation". It will feature both organizers, along with professors, researchers, and graduate students from University of Kent (UK), La Sapienza University (Italy), CNRS (France), Université Paris-Sud (France), and the American Graduate School in Paris. The debates will be moderated by Ambassador Michael Einik, a US Diplomat based in Paris who has been involved in diplomacy and foreign policy formulation from the administrations of Richard Nixon through that of Barack Obama, and currently teaches at the American Graduate School in Paris.

Click here to see the program

If you wish to attend, please email rsvp@ags.edu and we will send you the practical details.

(Photo: Kremlin.ru via Wikimedia Commons)