KADOC Fellowships on Religion, Culture and Society (1750-)
KADOC DOCUMENTATION AND RESEARCH CENTRE ON RELIGION CULTURE AND SOCIETY
KADOC, the Interfaculty Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society at KU Leuven, is one of the leading cultural heritage institutions in Belgium and an international research centre focusing on the societal legacies of religion and its material and immaterial manifestations in modern society.
The Centre’s impressive collection of archives and books documents the impact of religion on a variety of aspects of modern culture and society, in Flanders and internationally. KADOC’s research initiatives embrace innovative methods and deal with many different themes: gender, transnationalism and regionalism, imagination and practices, popular religion, intercultural exchanges, religion and science, religious entrepreneurship, subalternity, religious conflict and tolerance… KADOC considers international exchanges with innovative scholars working on these fields as vital for achieving its mission.
KADOC- KU Leuven yearly awards one fellowship to an international scholar (M/F/X) with max. 10 years of scientific seniority after PhD working on topics related to its main research fields. This programme offers the selected candidate the opportunity to work in its collections, to establish new scholarly links, and to broaden her/ his expertise in close interaction with Leuven scholars and heritage professionals.
The KADOC research fellowship on religion, culture and society 2021 was granted to Dr. Paul Glen Grant of the University of Wisconsin- Madison. During his research stay in May-July 2022 he will valorize the rich archival collections of KADOC to study the ways European and North American missionaries, especially those active in Congo between 1960 and 1965, learned to receive Christian teaching and charitable care from Congolese Christians.
For the coming years, the KADOC fellowship programme centers on the following themes:
2022: Religion and the margin: care and emancipation
2023: Religion, globalisation and international solidarity
2024: Religion, social ideas and policy
In our 2022-call we would like to express a particular interest in candidates researching the multifaceted social commitment of religious actors in the 19th and 20th centuries, for instance in health care, poor relief, popular education, care provisions for vulnerable and indigent people. We particularly welcome scholars researching the motives, specific nature and significance of this religiously motivated social agency, and how this was reflected in (public) discourses, strategies, and imagery. We are particularly interested in comparative or transnational research.