Department for the Study of Religions

Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University

Connecting the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences in the study of religious traditions and their general conditions

We educate

"Religious Studies taught me above all to think critically — to look up sources, not to accept everything as given fact, but to ask questions and investigate."

Fro PhD Applicants

We experiment

We study religious behavior in collaboration with the natural and social sciences.

I want to know more!

We organize lectures, workshops and conferences

We invite leading experts on both classic and new topics to Brno.

Look!

We map

We model religious behavior
in space and time. We strive to see connections —
the individual within the whole.

Show me!

Previous Following

IACESR International Conference in Brno, July 1–3, 2026

From the Research and Deparment

8 Sep

Medieval anti-heretical hate speech. Funded Ph.D. opportunity, deadline for expressions of interest: 5 October 2026

The Dissident Networks Project (DISSINET) invites applications from prospective Ph.D. students interested in digital and quantitative approaches to medieval anti-heretical hate speech. Successful candidates will join an international interdisciplinary research environment at Masaryk University. Expressions of interest are due by 5 October 2026.

2 Sep

What we read, mapped: the (inter)disciplinary shape of DISSINET's library

A visualisation of DISSINET's more than 11,000-item Zotero library mapped by subject domain, root collection down to individual topic, shows the team’s focus in bibliographic terms, and how that reading spans history, network science, and computational text analysis.

29 Aug

AI Augmented Historical Research

From conversation to folder: a guide to spark imagination about what’s possible when LLM AI works over your files, not just a chat window, in document-heavy historical research; written up from an internal DISSINET workshop.

From the Study

8 Jul

Anestis Karasaridis is now a PhD

Anestis defended the thesis A Computational Assessment of McNeill and Stark on Christian Expansion during the Antonine Plague and the Plague of Cyprian, and completed the doctoral exam. The defense took place on June 29 2026.

8 Jul

Katia Riccardo defended her thesis and is a Phd

On June 9 2026, Katia Riccardo defended the thesis A computational analysis of inquisitorial language and relationship networks in the inquisition register of Bologna (1291-1310) and passed the State exam successfully.

1 Jun

Two LEVYNA Team Members Receive Prestigious Awards

We are delighted to share that two members of the LEVYNA team have recently received major awards recognizing their outstanding research.