Through all centuries cultural and religious exchange took place between Europe and the Middle East. This also included migration out of political and religious reasons. With new migration movements from the middle east, especially Syria, Irac and Turkey, Europe face new challenges to integrate political and religious minorities into european cultures.

Main topics of the conference

The conference aims to understand historical and political reasons for migration movements in the past and today. A special focus will be on christian minorities and their experiences due to religious fragmentation and suffering.

Asfa-Wossen Asserate and Heleen Murre-van den berg will give more insights on the current situation of christians in Europe as key note speakers.

Master students from the protestant faculty of Göttingen will give short presentations about christian minorities and would like to discuss the results together with the participants.

An excursion to Corvey and the coptic-orthodox monastry at Brenkhausen is planned at the end of the conference. This will give direct insights into christian minority life in Germany. Bishop Damian will present the monastry and give more information about the current situation.

The conference will take place from 26th to 28th of November 2020.

The different sessions of presentations will give general information about the situation of (christian) migrants in Europe with a special focus and their religious setting.

Main questions to be answered are:

a) Should there be done a difference between muslim and christian migrants?
b) How flexible can Europeans and refugees be in adapting systems of values and ethics in new countries, societies or communities?
c) How are christian communities organized in Europe and Germany?
d) How much are christian migration communities represented in the public sphere and in the field of politics, education and media?
e) What and how much can be done to integrate christians and their experiences of war and trauma into their refuge country?
f) What are the benefits and contributions of christian migrants from Syria, Iraq and Turkey to education, history, culture?
g) What influence has the experience of religious fragmentation on the integration of christian migrants?
h) What can be said about the interactions between muslim and christian migrants?

Deadlines

The conference will take place from 25th to 26th of June 2021. Beside the participants from the POWERS project, two keynote speaker and additional contributors have been invited to broaden the information given on the subject.

• ■ If you wish to contribute a paper, please confirm your participation and send a titel and a short abstract (500 words) by 1st June 2020.
• ■ More information about the conference and logistics will be circulated by the end of March 2021.
• ■ Any written contribution should be send to the organizers by 1st June. The total length should be between 4000 to 75000 words.
• ■ The contributions will be printed in a book.

For any questions, please contact Lorenz Garbe (german, english), lorenz.garbe@stud.uni-goettingen.de