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

23 Mar

Public lecture by Dr. Paul Robertson

4:00 PM lecture

We would like to cordially invite you for a public talk delivered by Paul Robertson. Dr. Robertson is Senior Lecturer of Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies in University of New Hampshire.

25 Mar

CEDRR talk: From Archives to Algorithms: Digital Methods for Studying Imperial Commoners of Brazil and West Africa (1640-1822)

10:00 AM lecture

Join the DISSINET team for another CEDRR talk as Agata Bloch from the Polish Academy of Sciences demonstrates how algorithms, archival research, and critical digital humanities approaches transform our understanding of everyday people in Brazil and West Africa during the Portuguese Empire. Demival Vasques Filho from the University of Luxembourg will discuss further aspects of digital humanities research.

10 Sep

DISSINET II Closing / DISSINET III Launch

10:00 AM

Save the date 10 September 2026 10:00–12:00 and 14:00–16:00 for the conclusion of DISSINET II (ERC Consolidator grant, 9/2021–8/2026) and the opening of DISSINET III with a gathering that highlights the project’s journey and its forward-looking research paths.

From the Research and Deparment

CEDRR

16 Aug 2023

New article on the ancient Roman imperial propaganda

Tomáš Glomb (MUNI), Vojtěch Kaše (ZČU), and Viktor Zavřel (MUNI) have published their article "Iconographic Trends in Roman Imperial Coinage in the Context of Societal Changes in the Second and Third Centuries CE: A Small-Scale Test of the Affluence Hypothesis" in Open Archaeology.

LEVYNA

7 Aug 2023

Costly signals induce more trustworthiness when used in religious settings like pilgrimages

In an experimental study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Radim Chvaja, Martin Lang and colleagues show that religious *costly* signals are more effective in communicating trustworthiness to religious/secular receivers than secular signals.

LEVYNA

3 Aug 2023

New paper about the evolution of human ritual

Journal Religion, Brain, & Behavior published article authored by Martin Lang and Radek Kundt where they synthesize literature from several disciplines to identify possible reasons for the evolution of collective rituals. The authors argue that rituals evolved to facilitate cooperative communication.

From the Study

LEVYNAPhD

4 Oct 2018