KU Leuven is a self-governing public university, with a threefold mission of public interest in the field of higher education, scientific research and societal and scientific services. It is the largest university in Belgium and most highly ranked. KU Leuven is ranked the 12th European university in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking, and the 7th European university in the field of Arts and Humanities more specifically. RETOPEA will bring together KU Leuven researchers from the different faculties and domains in the field of Arts and Humanities: anthropology, Arabic studies, global governance studies, history, the history teaching programme and religious studies. With this project, the researchers want to contribute to the university’s broader ambition to encourage reflective introspection of society and its functioning, provide new insights into how we stand as human beings, and promote mutual cultural understanding.

The following KU Leuven research centres and departments will be involved in the RETOPEA project:

MODERNITY AND SOCIETY 1800-2000 (MOSA): RETOPEA will be coordinated at the research group Modernity and Society 1800-2000. MoSa is part of the department of history of KU Leuven and studies political, social and economic processes of change that are associated with modernity and modernization. It does so in a Belgian, European and global perspective. More concretely, RETOPEA fits in with the team of researchers investigating transformations in political and religious beliefs, practices and institutions throughout the 19th and 20th century. Informed by historiographical and anthropological perspectives, the researchers study international actors (institutions, movements and individuals), global-local relationships and transnational phenomena. Their focus lies on agency and agenda-setting as well as on bottom-up processes which brought about new organized forms of trans- and international interaction in the last 200 years. More information.

EARLY MODERN HISTORY fosters an interest in a driven and empirical approach to study transformations of society from roughly the late fifteenth until the eighteenth century. The research group takes a special interest in religious and political history of the Low Countries (and its surrounding regions) within their global context. Its members have extensive expertise in peace studies, the history of religious conflict (reformation, counter-reformation and inquisition) and the relationship between church and state. Over the past two decades, the research group has been rewarded with several large research grants and distinctions for studying peace settlements, reconciliation strategies and religious exchange during the Eighty Years’ War. Several members of the research group are involved in the editorial board of the internationally renowned journal Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique / The Louvain Journal of Church History. More information: https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/nieuwetijd/english

KADOC-KU LEUVEN is an interfaculty research and documentation centre of KU Leuven. Though originally set up to study and document Catholic subculture in Flanders (Belgium) it has developed into a research, documentation and heritage centre of international reputation focused on the interaction between religion (broadly defined), culture and society in the 19th and 20th centuries (including Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, new spiritualities). Its research is divided in five subthemes : (1) Religious institutions and groups; (2) Practices and experiences; (3) Cultural and religious diversity (including interactions and conflict); (4) Religion, art and culture; and (5) Society and ideology. The expertise of KADOC relates to many different themes, for instance the history of churches, religious communities and institutes, civil society, pillarization and politics, social history, migration and emancipation, education and care, youth and volunteer movements, confronting religion from an interdenominational and interreligious perspective with other well-known identity-markers (gender, class, ethnicity, nation) and including popular religion, the creation and functioning of religious subcultures, the meaning of religious practices, and religious imagination and representations. As part of its activities in the field of science diffusion and infrastructure KADOC has established ODIS as a dynamic and contextual database offering instruments for innovative, multidisciplinary and comparative research into the history of civil society, furthering cross-fertilisation between scholary researchers and the custodians of the relevant cultural heritage collections. Although IEG and KADOC already established contacts, the RETOPEA project allows for building upon those two institutions to further develop links and establish a strong European platform for data storage and distribution in open access for researchers, various professionals inter al. in heritage, education and journalism, as well as a wider public. More information.

INTERCULTURALISM, MIGRATION AND MINORITIES RESEARCH CENTRE: conducts State-of-the-art anthropological analyses of topics related to mobility and minorities. Through in-depth ethnographic study, the researchers disentangle the diversified relations and their global (dis)connections, with special attention for minorities and less visible community building. The various research projects focus on the following issues: (new) migrations, internal boundary creation, blurring of boundaries, and cross-cultural fertilization. This allows for an in-depth reflection on the meaning of boundaries and the emergence of mobilities between and within cultures and societies. Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has figured as an important angle of analysis in the ongoing research projects conducted at the IMMRC. Through the expertise of Nadia Fadil and several doctoral researchers, the IMMRC holds an internationally recognized expertise on these questions as well as on the ongoing debates on the integration and presence of religious minorities in general, and Islam in Europe in particular.

The LEUVEN CENTRE FOR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE STUDIES (GGS) is an interdisciplinary research centre, of the Faculty of Law recognized as a KU Leuven Centre of Excellence in 2010 and as a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on ‘Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Europe and the World’ in 2016. It was set up to promote, support and carry out high-quality international, innovative and interdisciplinary research on global governance processes and multilateralism. In addition to its fundamental research activities the Centre carries out independent applied research and offers innovative policy advice and solutions to policy-makers at national, regional and global level on multilateral governance and global public policy issues. It is on this extensive expertise with international and European applied research in the humanities ‒ and in the formulation and communication of policy recommendations that the centre appeals to for this project. GGS currently has more than 60 members from law, economics, political science, history, philosophy, area studies and bioscience engineering and 25 in-house research staff. More information: https://ghum.kuleuven.be/ggs.

In the SPECIFIC HISTORY TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMME research is being conducted into teaching and learning processes in history education. In this respect, a close collaboration is well-established with the Center for Instructional Psychology and Technology (CIPT) of the Faculty of Psychology and Pedagogy of KU Leuven, which provides all necessary support in applying specific qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The programme prepares masters in history to become history teachers, through theoretical, practical and applied courses, and by organizing a pre-service training internship, via extensive contacts with secondary schools in Flanders and Brussels.

Coordinator and Principal Investigators

Patrick Pasture, Coordinator, principal investigator, Professor of European and Global History and Director of the master programme in European Studies: Transnational and Global Perspectives at KU Leuven. He recently published Imagining European Unity since 1000 with Palgrave-Macmillan, and is currently working on a global history of Christendom in Western Europe and North America 1500-2000. Patrick Pasture has been Senior Research Fellow at the Leibniz-Institute for European History in Mainz (Germany). Over the past two decades, he has also been a Visiting Fellow/Scholar at the IISG (Amsterdam), the Centre d’histoire sociale du XXe siècle (Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), the University of Pennsylvania, Visiting Professor at Kobe University (Japan), the European Program of Drew University (Brussels) and Peter Paul Rubens Chair at the University of California, Berkeley. Since 2007, he is Chair of the Network Religion of the European Social Science History Conferences. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the Belgian Review of Contemporary History, Europeana (L’Harmattan), Labour History (Routledge), and the International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity (HCM).

Violet Soen, Associate Professor of Early Modern History; is keen on introducing the methods of peace studies into the practice of early modern history. In studying the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Wars of Religion, she develops a clear attention for questions of peace settlements and reconciliation between the various Christian churches emanating in this period. Her publications on the Dutch Revolt and the sixteenth-century inquisition in the Low Countries have been distinguished by the Royal Commission for History and the Royal Flemish Academy for Belgium for best study in religious history, best historical study based on archival research, and best text edition. Violet Soen is member of the editorial board of the Revue d'Histoire ecclésiastique / The Louvain Journal for Church History, and serves on the board of the international Reformation Research Consortium (www.reforc.com), the Flemish-Dutch Association for Early Modern History (www.vnvng.eu), and the scientific committee of the Fondazione per le scienze religiose in Bologna (www.fscire.it). She is also secretary for the History Section of the Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal-, Letterkunde en Geschiedenis (www.kzm.be) and a member of the Young Academy Flanders (www.jongeacademie.be). Violet has been a fellow of Columbia University (New York), European University Institute (Firenze), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and Academia dei Lincei (Rome).

Nadia Fadil, Associate Professor at the IMMRC; studies the presence of Islam as a lived and embodied reality in Europe. Her research deals with the ways in which subjectivities of Maghrebi background constitute themselves as ‚Muslims’ through a distinct and heterogeneous engagement with the Islamic tradition. Her theoretical interest extends to questions of subjectivity and power, ethical selfhood, postcoloniality, race and secularism. She has published extensively on these topics in academic journals (such as Social Anthropology, Feminist Review or Ethnicities; Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power and Ethnic and Racial Studies) and written various book chapters in edited volumes. Nadia Fadil is often consulted for policy advice on integration in Flanders and has been engaged amongst various minority organizations involved in this field. She is currently directing the research project Redefining Home (Research Foundation Flanders) which started in February 2015 and seeks to understand new mobility patterns amongst second and third-generation Maghribi Muslims from Europe to the UAE and Montréal.

Axel Marx, Deputy Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies; is a specialist in the field of global governance, sustainability standards, non-state market regulation, human rights, trade governance, research methodology, comparative case methods and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). His publications have appeared inter alia in European Political Science Review, Regulation and Governance, Political Research Quarterly, Journal of World Trade, Research in Sociology of Organizations, Journal of Socio-Economics, International Journal of Human Rights, Journal of Human Rights Practice, International Labor Review, World Bank Legal Review, Asia-Europe Journal, Journal of Business Research, Globalizations and Sociological Methodology. He recently co-edited books on Global Governance and Private Standards (Edward Elgar with M. Maertens, J. Swinnen and J. Wouters, 2012), Global Governance of Labor Rights (Edward Elgar with J. Wouters, G. Rayp & L. Beke, 2015); Global Governance Through Trade (Edward Elgar with J. Wouters, B. Natens & D. Geraets, 2015). As an expert to policy-makers he has contributed to reports and expert assignments for inter alia UNIDO, ILO, European Commission, European Parliament, Committee of the Regions, Belgian Federal Government, Belgian Flemish Government, German Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Axel Marx studied in Leuven, Hull and Cambridge and holds a PhD from KU Leuven.

Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, Assistant Professor of History Didactics, is a specialist in history education. His main research interests related to learning and teaching processes in history education focus on position of the present, the use of sources, students’ historical narratives and the connection with their identification, historical representations of the colonial past, and the teaching of intercultural contacts. In this research, he combines qualitative and quantitative research methods, involving questionnaires, textbook research, individual and group interviews, discourse analysis etc. He has been visiting professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, and research fellow at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook research in Braunschweig (Germany), University of Coimbra (Portugal) and Albert University in Edmonton (Canada). He has been part of a European Comenius-project Codec and in the COST IS1205 Action. He is currently involved in the ongoing curriculum reform for Flemish history education and appointed as an expert in the assessment committee of the final attainment targets achievement in primary education. He is president of the Flemish History Teachers’ Association.

Peter Heyrman, Head of Research of KADOC Research. In close consultation with the director of KADOC and its Scientific Board he develops and coordinates the research activities of this interfaculty center, fostering its scientific output and academic networks and partnerships, this at KU Leuven, in Flanders/Belgium but also progressively on an international level. His personal scientific work as an historian covers various aspects of Belgium’s socio‐political history in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing above all on the history of small and medium‐sized business and the relationship between religion and entrepreneurship. Heyrman also manages KADOC's research infrastructure. In 2000‐2003 he headed the team that designed and constructed the ODIS‐database (FWO Max Wildiersfund G.4423.00N). When in 2009‐2014 this instrument was extended and renewed thanks to a Hercules investment (AKUL043, Hercules 3H090277, App nr E31909), this project was realized under his operational responsibility. He chairs the Technical Committee of ODIS and acts as the liaison officer towards the members of the ODIS‐User Group and thus the many projects and partners that use the instrument. Supported by a small technical team he oversees the daily management of the database and coordinates data-input and data-processing.

Relevant publications and/or other products and services

• Patrick Pasture (2015), Imaging European Unity Since 1000 AD, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
• Patrick Pasture (2009), “Religion in contemporary Europe: contrasting perceptions and dynamics”, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 49 (2009) 319−350.
• Leo Kenis, Jaak Billiet and Patrick Pasture (eds), The Transformation of Christian Churches in Western Europe. (Leuven University Press/Kadoc 2010).
• Nadia Fadil (2017), ‘Recalling the Islam of the parents. Liberal and secular Muslims redefining the contours of religious authenticity’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 24 (1), 82-99.
• Violet Soen (2012). Vredehandel. Adellijke en Habsburgse verzoeningspogingen tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand (1564-1581). Amsterdam Studies in the Dutch Golden Age (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press).

Relevant previous projects or activities

• 2013-2017 Coordinator of the FP7 Programme FRAME, ‘Fostering Human Rights Among European (External and Internal) Policies”. Financed by the European Commission. Project’(Coordinated by GGS), http://www.fp7-frame.eu/. 2016-2017 ‘The Rule of Law – A Strategic Priority of the European Union’s External Action’ (ROLA) is an interdisciplinary Jean Monnet project conducted by the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies (GGS) and co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission.
• 2015-2019 Principal Investigator (Nadia Fadil) of the project ‘Redefining Home: Transnational Practices of European Muslims in the United Arab Emirats and Montréal’, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and the Université de Liège (Belgium). This ethnography-based interdisciplinary research project investigates newer forms of onward migration by people with a background in ‘older’ flows of post-war labour migration. In particular, this project is concerned with complex forms of contemporary transnational mobility by focusing specifically on European nationals with a Maghrebi-Muslim background in Belgium, The Netherlands and France, who are moving to Montréal and the United Arab Emirates. Accounting for such distinct localities sheds light on their dialectic relations to broader systemic transformations, and allows us to examine how space, identity and home come to be renegotiated and redefined through mobility.
• 2013-2015 Principal Investigator (Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse) of the project Colonisation and Decolonisation in National History Cultures and Memory Politics in European Perspective (CoDec), financed by the European Commission (Lifelong Learning Program / Comenius-CMP), the project looks at how colonial pasts and processes of decolonization, including issues related to religious coexistence, are taught in history lessons, http://www.uni-siegen.de/codec-eu/index.html.en?lang=en
• 2005-2012 Principal Investigator (Patrick Pasture) of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) Research Project Gender and Christianity in modern Europe: beyond the feminization thesis, which received additional funding from KADOC and the Faculties of Arts of the University of Ghent and KU Leuven. The project resulted a.o. in a PhD-thesis and a book publication: Patrick Pasture, Jan Art and Thomas Buerman (eds), Gender and Christianity in Modern Europe: Beyond the Feminization Thesis (UPL/ KADOC 2012).