Cluster of excellence has new board

Medievalist historian Prof. Dr. Gerd Althoff confirmed in speaker’s office

Prof. Dr. Gerd Althoff (66), medievalist historian of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU), was re-appointed speaker of the cluster of excellence “Religion and Politics”. The meeting of the principal investigators (PI) unanimously re-elected the medievalist for another two years.

The board of directors of the largest national research association on religions was also up for election. Prof. Dr. Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, early modern historian, Prof. Dr. Thomas Bauer, Islamic scholar, and Prof. Dr. Hubert Wolf, church historian and at the same time the cluster of excellence’s science communication coordinator, were confirmed in their office. Newly elected were literature scholar Prof. Dr. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, jurist Prof. Dr. Christian Walter and political scientist Prof. Dr. Ulrich Willems.

Prof. Dr. Peter Oestmann, jurist, and Prof. Dr. Hans-Richard Reuter, Protestant theologian, resigned at their own request. The board’s two mid-level faculty representatives will be reappointed in the following weeks. The board of directors and the meeting of the PI manage the cluster for two years each and act as its representatives in matters involving central university bodies as well as the media and society.

More than 150 academics from 20 disciplines and eleven countries do research in the cluster of excellence “Religion and Politics”. They deal with  the sensitive relationship of religion and politics from Antiquity to the present and from Latin America and Europe to the Arab and the Asian world. It is nationally the largest research association of its kind and of the 37 clusters of excellence in Germany, it is the only one to deal with religions. The federal government and the state governments support the project within the scope of the Excellence Initiative with 37 million euros until 2012. (vvm)