Teaching and Learning Religion: Educational Practices in Swedish Wicca
Facts
- Contact person:
- Olivia Cejvan
- Financer:
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- The Crafoord Foundation
- Responsible at MaU:
- Manon Hedenborg White
- Project members at MaU:
- Time frame:
- 01 March 2025 - 30 June 2028
- Faculty/department:
- Research subject:
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- Religious Studies
- History of Religions
About the project
This project takes as its starting point that the development and endurance of a religious movement is dependent on the efficacy of its educational practices. Based on a case study of how secular and religious educational practices have inspired, shaped, and sustained the growing international New Religious Movement (NRM) Wicca, in Sweden, the project will contribute to theorization on the importance of education for the endurance of religious movements.
Using ethnographic and oral history methods, the project will carry out a longitudinal study of how educational contexts and practices contributed to Wicca's establishment, change and endurance in Sweden from its inception in 1987 to today. In so doing, the project will advance understandings of how and why local, regional, and national secular educational contexts influence the development of religious movements, generating urgent insights into how and why religious movements change, decline, or endure.