Málþing um búddisma á Norðurlöndum

Guðfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands efnir til málþings um búddisma á Norðurlöndum í stofu 229 í Aðalbyggingu HÍ þann 14. febrúar kl. 12:30-14:00. Aðgangur er ókeypis en einnig verður hægt að fylgjast með málstofunni í streymi á Zoom. 

Málstofustjóri verður Haraldur Hreinsson, lektor við Guðfræði- og trúarbragðafræðideild Háskóla Íslands.

Um fyrirlestrana: 

In our lecture we will present some material from our ongoing research project on the history and contemporary presence of Buddhism in the Nordic countries. Buddhists in the Nordic countries involve migrants from many different nations and regions, converts, monks and nuns of various monastic communities, and teachers and students of mindfulness and other forms of meditation. Many individuals have personal interests in Buddhism and are consumers of literature about Buddhism and give Buddhism a material presence in their homes. The project aims at comparisons between the different Nordic countries and to identify possible unique characteristics of Nordic Buddhism.

Fyrirlesarar:

Jørn Borup is an associate professor at the Department of the Study of Religion at Aarhus University. His research areas include Japanese Buddhism, Buddhism in the West, religious diversity, spirituality, and religion and migration. Besides articles for journals and publications in Danish, he is the author of Decolonising the study of religion, and beyond. Who owns Buddhism? (Routledge 2023), Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Myōshinji, a Living Religion (Brill 2008), and has co-edited Eastspirit. Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West (Brill 2017), The Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity (Brill 2018) and Religious Diversity in Asia (Brill 2019). He has been director of the Center for Contemporary Religion and head of the Department of the Study of Religion (Aarhus University) as well as the chair of the Danish Association for the Study of Religion.

Mitra Härkönen is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. She has a master’s degree (M.Soc.Sc.) in social and cultural anthropology and a doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in the study of religions. Härkönen’s research interests range from Buddhist, Tibetan, and migration studies to gender and feminist studies. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Tibetan Buddhist nuns in India and the Tibetan regions under the Republic of China and among Thai Buddhist women living in Finland. She has extensively studied Buddhism  and researched Thai berry pickers in Finland. Her current research project examines the impact of Thai Buddhism on Finnish-Thai transnational families' decision-making and everyday practices. Besides various articles, she has authored Power and Agency in the Lives of Contemporary Tibetan Nuns: An Intersectional Study (2023) and co-edited a book on Buddhism in Finland (2023).

Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. His main fields of research include Hindu sacred geography and pilgrimage, transnational Hinduism, Sāṃkhya and Yoga theory and practice, and religion and public space in South Asia and the diasporas. Among his publications are the monographs Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge 2013) and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge 2018), and the edited volumes Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill 2020), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (Routledge 2021) and Hindu Diasporas (Oxford University Press 2023).

Katarina Plank is associate professor of Religious Studies at Karlstad University. Her ethnographic research focuses on the lived religious perspectives of migrants and of contemporary spirituality in Sweden, with a special research interest in the development of Buddhism in Sweden. She is the principal investigator for the research project “The New Faces of the Folk Church” (funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) and is currently also involved in research on lived religion and social mobility among migrants, and how COVID-19 effected migrant religious groups in Sweden (both projects funded by the Swedish Research Council). Plank has written articles for journals and publications in both English and Swedish on the development of Buddhism in Sweden. Among her recent publications can be found Eastern Practices and Nordic Bodies: Lived Religion, Spirituality and Healing in the Nordic Countries (co-edited with Daniel Enstedt, Palgrave 2023), Levd religion: Det heliga i vardagen (also co-edited with Daniel Enstedt, Nordic Academic Press 2018), and she was the editor of Mindfulness: Tradition, tolkning och tillämpning (Nordic Academic Press 2014).