22. July: Performance violence and public ritual response. The focus of this subproject is to analyse how and why religious institutions in Norway became ritual arenas for protest and grief in response to Anders Behring Breivik’s violent attacks, and what it does to politics. Based on film analysis, field work, archival studies of the public rituals and their remains, in-depth interviews and accredited court observations from the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, this study will be conducted by Jone Salomonsen (University of Oslo) together with Ida Marie Høeg (KIFO, Centre for Church Research) and Cora Alexa Døving, (The Holocaust Center at UiO).
Contesting evil: developing theological understandings of resistance. A conceptual, historical case study will aid this focus study in understanding terrorism’s multilayered frames of reference. In his subproject, Kjetil Hafstad (University of Oslo) will look at some of the theological underpinnings of grass-roots reactions against evil, oppression and terror, in a historical perspective, going back both to Martin Luther and Karl Barth.
Ritualized food and national identity in the Church of Denmark. A study undertaken by Gitte Buch-Hansen (University of Copenhagen), that critically explores national identities at risk in the Church of Denmark, proceeding from the idea that the dining table has become the site where national identity is performed and negotiated in church.
The ritualised public sphere of the Polish Woodstock festival. This subproject is to be undertaken by Grzegorz Brzozowski (PhD at University of Warsaw, Poland), and will explore how traditional religious ritual and modern, youth-driven secular rites can coexist within the same festival frame.
Ritualising Diaspora and re-occupying Kåfjord. Case study to be undertaken by Graham Harvey (Open University), which will explore the permeable boundaries between ritual and performance, indigeneity and non-indigeneity, communal assemblage and individualisation, by comparing practices at the annual Sami Riddu Riddu festival in Northern Norway with rituals conducted among Maori and Pacific Islander diaspora groups in London, UK.