Research Projects
Religion, Spirituality and Wellbeing: a Comparative Approach of Transreligiosity and Crisis in Southern Europe
The project explores the transreligious ways in which contemporary religion, spirituality and wellbeing are practised in three southern European countries (Portugal, Spain and Greece), which have been affected significantly by socioeconomic and political challenges and transnational flows in the last decade, and by a crucial healthcare crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, very recently. The choice of this comparative context stems, firstly, from the fact that what binds it is the degree of the ‘crisis’, one of the highest among European countries, and its intimate link with the subsequent health challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic (and possible further complications in society, culture and economy, due to the Russian-Ukrainian warfare). Secondly, the comparison is particularly pertinent in countries that have been academically and publicly understood as stereotypically not only socioeconomically underdeveloped (in European standards), but also as permeated by their respective established religiosity, that is, the dominant forms of Christianity (Catholicism and Orthodoxy), with scarce investigation on their ascending new forms of religious, spiritual, and therapeutic manifestation. So far, no significant research has been conducted, neither in terms of comparative context nor in terms of the intimate links between religion, spirituality and wellbeing, especially in relation to the pandemic. Placing the ‘wellbeing’ as our main ethnographic theme, rather than focusing (only) on transcendental experiences of the sacred, will seek to understand how the different levels of crisis have affected our ethnographic subjects and how, in turn, through their religio-spiritual practices, they view and tackle with their personal health crises. The project’s suitability lies in its intention to overthrow previously established stereotypes and fill the research gap, by placing emphasis on the therapeutic character of everyday religious practice in seemingly diverse religio-spiritual, well-...
Project Information
2023-03-01
2026-02-28
Project Partners