This ecumenical and international webinar series will foster critical perspectives on migration in Europe. The series facilitates an ongoing conversation on these issues among theologians and migration scholars, refugees and migrants, activists, and church and civic leaders. The initiative has the potential to enhance the promotion of the human dignity, the protection of migrants’ and refugees’ rights regardless of their origin. And first and last: Can theology and churches represent serious challenges to the present European politics and societies, often dominated by issues of security, immigration restrictions, and populist initiatives?
Program:
- General welcome: Kaia Rønsdal
- Keynote speaker: Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
- Reports from practice: Åsa Nausner
- Closing reflections: Aldo Skoda, Trygve Wyller
Moderator
- Kaia Rønsdal
Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager
Dr. Khrebtan-Hörhager is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies Director/Leader of Educational Abroad Programs in Italy, and Program Director of the ACT International Human Rights Film Festival at Colorado State University. USA. Julia holds four International Communication Association Top Paper Awards for her work on inclusive multiculturalism, Othering, and politics of memory. Her research and teaching interests are in intercultural communication and international relations, European studies, global conflict, Othering, cinematography, and critical media studies. Feminist studies, rhetoric of materiality, and business leadership are her further foci. She is the author of two books, Communicating the Other across Cultures and Migrant World Making, and a wide variety of articles and book chapters. Julia is fluent in several languages and is often regarded as “a cultural mentor” and “an intercultural ambassador” by her colleagues and current and former students.
Åsa Nausner, PhD
Åsa Nausner works with issues of migration, integration and inter-religious encounters. Exploring what it means for the church to be listening, networking and involved in projects in marginalized communities. Inter-religious youthwork involving methods of storytelling. Challenged by populism, racism, and islamophobia. Strategist for encounters across borders, Church of Sweden, Örebro
Aldo Skoda
Aldo Skoda is a Member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of St. Charles (Scalabrinians). After completing his studies in Philosophy and Theology with a Licentiate in Christian Anthropology, he graduated in Psychology at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and obtained a Doctorate in Pastoral Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.
Skoda is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Human Mobility at the Pontifical Urbanian University; Executive Director of SIMI, an institute specialising in interdisciplinary research and training on migration; Director for Europe and Africa of SIMN, an organisation that supports, promotes and coordinates the socio-pastoral action of the Scalabrinian Missionaries globally.
Trygve Wyller
Trygve Wyller is professor emeritus of systematic theology and science of diaconia at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. His research interests range from religion and migration; fundamental questions in theological research; Christian history of care, to the philosophical-theological analysis of social work. He teaches and publishes both in classical theology as well as in professional ethics. Among his publications on migration issues are Contested Hospitalities in a Time of Migration. Religion and Secular Counterspaces in the Nordic Region (2019, co-edited with Synnøve Bendixsen); Borderland Religion: Ambiguous Practices of Difference, Hope, and Beyond (2018, co-edited with Daisy Machado and Bryan Turner), as well as a range of articles, such as The Religious-Secular Human. Epistemological Violence and the Resistance of Touching Bodies - Theology in the Context of Film and Migration (2022); The makeshift curtain: A generous Christianity: Ecclesiologies beyond the religious-secular binary (2021) and "Something More": The citizenship Performativity of Religiously Founded Refugee Projects (2019).
About the series organisers
The Migration, Ethics and Theology webinar series is developed in a cooperation between the Scalabrini International Migration Institute (SIMI) in Rome and scholars in the research project Nordhost – Migration and Hospitality in a Nordic context. The partners hosted an international conference in Rome in 2019, published in the edited volume Contemporary Christian-Cultural Values (C. Nahnfeldt/K. Rønsdal, ed.) (Routledge 2021), and the volume Contested Hospitalities in the time of Migration (S. Bendixsen/T. Wyller, ed). The SIMI Institute publish ed in 2021: ‘Migrants and Pilgrims as our Ancestors’ (1 Chr 29:15). Theology of Human Mobility in the 21st Century (E. Chaves Dias /A. Skoda/V. De Sanctis, ed.)
Currently, the partners behind the series are Kaia Rønsdal and Trygve Wyller, University of Oslo – Faculty of Theology (Norway). Aldo Skoda and Gioacchino Campese, Scalabrini International Migration Institute; Pontificia Università Urbaniana – Faculty of Theology (Italy), Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Åbo Akademi University – Faculty of Theology (Finland); Uppsala University, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (Sweden).
The webinar series will foster networks amongst scholars and Christian based organizations from different countries with the purpose of enhancing how theology can contribute to migration understanding. Concretely, the initiative aims to provide a platform for dialogues and exchange of experiences of good practices and lessons learned among Christian communities.
Previous webinars
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April 24, 2023 - People not numbers... (Un)Welcoming migrants in Europe
Next webinars
- April 8, 2024 - Climate change and human displacement
- October 28, 2024 - Migration and development: a Christian perspective
