Hefner Joins Panel Examining Global Transformation of Religions

On April 20, 2022, Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, participated in an event at Georgetown University’s Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs celebrating the upcoming retirement Jose Casanova, Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center, and his transformative book Public Religions in the Modern World.

More than a celebration of the book and its argument, this conference on “A Quarter Century of Public Religions” was an invitation to examine the global transformations of religions in the public sphere in the last twenty-five years. Leading experts in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, religion, history, and political science evaluated these transformations from their own areas of expertise and research.

Hefner joined a panel of experts – David Buckley of the University of Louisville, Rev. Patrick Gilger, S.J. of Loyola University Chicago, and Katherine Marshall of Georgetown University – for a discussion on “Religions, Secularisms, and Public Spheres.” 

A recording of the Berkley Center panel can be viewed below.

Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is the former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” Read more about Professor Hefner on his faculty profile. 

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