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

From the Research and Deparment

LEVYNA

13 Aug 2024

Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi

In a pop-science article published in Dingir, E. Kundtová Klocová discusses the various socio-cultural aspects of the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual as practiced in Mauritius.

LEVYNA

2 Aug 2024

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual – a study by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a field-study conducted among Hindu-Mauritians published in the American Journal of Human Biology, D. Xygalatas, M. Lang, P. Maňo, J. Krátký and R. Fischer discovered that individuals dynamically attune their affective states to one another in a collective religious ritual, implying that they adjust their emotional states to align with the group.

LEVYNA

25 Jun 2024

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a single-group observational study published in the Journal of Religion and Health, S. Kotherová with J. Cigán and colleagues showed that one-fifth of their Samadhi meditation participants (first timers) got post-meditation nausea symptoms – this result indicates that meditation can cause adverse effects in some practitioners.

From the Study

LEVYNAPhD

13 Jun 2022

Advertising cooperativeness

In the journal Royal Society Open Science, Martin Lang, Radim Chvaja, and David Václavík, together with Benjamin G. Purzycki, and Rostislav Staněk, published an article on how costly signals communicate cooperative intentions.

GrantPhD

17 Dec 2021

Tereza Menšíková received the IGA grant

The Masaryk University Internal Grant Agency will fund her project Challenging Marginalisation Online: The Case of Dalit Movement Network Through Blog and News Platforms.

LEVYNAGrantPhD

17 Dec 2021

Jana Nenadalová received the IGA grant for a second time

The Masaryk University Internal Grant Agency will fund her project Sensing the Darkness: Field research of Dark therapy.