This two-day focused workshop, a part of the ongoing Shared Sacred Spaces and the Politics of Pluralism project sponsored by the  Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs, will explore the question of coexistence at shared sacred sites.

How people practice their religions, how they understand and communicate their practices, and how their practices impact others at the sites are questions that are vital to our understanding of how space can be negotiated and shared between two or more potentially antagonistic groups.  How do religious leaders justify – or condemn – the sharing of sites?  Is prayer and ritual shaped by leaders to facilitate inclusion or expulsion of the other?  What are the particular rituals and practices that religious leaders engage in that shape the identities of the believers?  What local narratives do they appeal to in order to unite through the role of the shrine?

Participants at the workshop will include:

• Dionigi Albera, Aix-Marseille University

• Karen Barkey, Columbia University

• Anna Bigelow, North Carolina State University

• Rebecca Bryant, London School of Economics

• Yogesh Chandrani, Columbia University

• Maria Couroucli, Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense

• Benoit Fliche, Institute Francais d'Etudes Anatolienne

• Laurent Gayer, CERI, Sciences Po

• Mete Hatay,  PRIO Cyprus Centre

• Christophe Jaffrelot, CERI, Sciences Po

• Aminah Mohammad-Arif, French National Center for Scientific Research

• Vatsal Naresh, Columbia University

• Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Columbia University

• Jusmeet Sihra, Sciences Po

Sponsored by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Sciences Po.

The tentative program for this workshop is now available here.