Workshop: Joshua C. Jackson - Alternative Methods in the Science of Culture and Religion

4:00 PM – 6:00 PM workshop

The scientific study of culture and religion has a long history filled with deep theoretical questions. However, we are just now gaining the methodological tools to properly answer these questions. In particular, techniques involving language analysis and ethnographic analysis give us access to samples that cannot be accessed with traditional survey and experimental methods, either because they are located in remote geographical regions or because they existed in an earlier period of history. 

Lecture: Joshua C. Jackson - The New Science of Religious Change: Theory, Method, and an Application

6:00 PM lecture

Research on human culture is adopting a more dynamic approach, with a rise in longitudinal studies focused on cultural change and development over short-term and long-term human history. However, most research on culture and religion focuses on one-shot dilemmas and cross-sectional results, despite the cultural evolutionary implications of the field’s findings. Here I outline the recipe for a new science of religious change. I argue that studying religious change would benefit from a cultural evolutionary focus and a broader set of methods. I demonstrate how these theoretical and methodological tools can be used together by describing new research on how ecological threats and cultural tightness change people’s views of gods in both one-shot designs and over hundreds of years. 

Doctoral examination and thesis defense: Stamatia Noutsou

1:45 PM – 4:15 PM study event

With great joy, we announce the doctoral examination and thesis "Cistercians, heresy and persecution: Politicising the Cistercian anti-heretical fight, 1145-1184" defense of Mg.A. Stamatie Noutsou, M.A.

Doctoral examination and thesis defense of František Novotný

10:00 AM – 12:30 PM study event

With great joy, we announce the doctoral examination and doctoral thesis on "Mysteries of Evil: The Thematization of Ritual Devil Worship Imagery in Late Medieval Inquisitorial Trials" defense of Mgr. František Novotný.

Workshop: "Basic principles of data visualization in academic practice" (Tomáš Marek, KISK)

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM workshop