Summary: The main aim of this project is to produce a modular syllabus on the history of Science-and-Religion which addresses what we regard as a largely understudied and lesser known cultural and geographical area, namely the non-Protestant and non-Angloamerican, but yet mainly Christian milieus in Europe and the Americas. The structure of the course will take into consideration the plurality of potential audiences, from summer schools to undergraduate and graduate students, and will, therefore, allow for a diversity of itineraries depending on the interests of those teaching and/or taking it.

The course will challenge static or normative ideas of “science” and of “religion” and will, instead, and following the path-breaking work of Peter Harrison, consider local, temporally limited, and largely contingent approaches to the study and attitudes towards Nature and the Divine. It will also pay special attention not only to the diversity of theologies within the Christian world, but also the uses of both “science” and “religion” as political, cultural and ideological weapons. Issues such as the struggles of clericalism and anti-clericalism, the ideologies of nationalism, liberalism or marxism, the agendas of missionaries and colonisers, among many others, will shape the structure and contents of this module.

The first test of the module will take place in June 2022 at a Summer School in Crete.