Periodic Reporting for period 2 - NERELUN (Negotiating Religion at the United Nations)
Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-01-31
Religion is an increasingly salient issue within the United Nations (UN), especially in relation to its human rights activities. There is a widespread perception of the growing threat posed by Islam, especially to the universality of human rights. The academic debate on the topic is highly polarized, with one view defending secularism as a basis of the universality of human rights and the suppression of religion, and the other seeing religion as a basis of universality and secularism as a threat to it; a more critical view questions both the neat distinctions between these rival views, and their internal coherence. Taking a different path, this project takes secular and religious visions as two sides of the same equation and is exploring the question of how states negotiate the unending conflict between these two visions in relation to the construction of human right norms and institutions within the UN.
This issue is becoming increasingly central in public debates, as states tend to mobilize religious ideologies to advance and uphold new visions of human rights and justify the most heinous violations of core human rights norms in contemporary conflicts.
The project’s aim is to write a revisionist history of the sources and consequences of the conflict between secular and religious visions in the field of human rights. It proposes a new theory to conceptualize the dialectic conflict between these two visions. These positions are being assessed in relation to various critical junctures in the development of human right norms and institutions from the creation of the UN to the present. It is based on primary sources collected from UN archives and semi-structured interviews, analyzed through the process-tracing method. In producing a theoretically informed and empirical investigation, the project aims to reframe the terms of the debate across disciplines and allow for the formulation of innovative policy recommendations to help EU states cope with the tension between secular and religious visions domestically and at the UN, in a way that transcends binary or absolutist perspectives dominating academic and public debates.
This issue is becoming increasingly central in public debates, as states tend to mobilize religious ideologies to advance and uphold new visions of human rights and justify the most heinous violations of core human rights norms in contemporary conflicts.
The project’s aim is to write a revisionist history of the sources and consequences of the conflict between secular and religious visions in the field of human rights. It proposes a new theory to conceptualize the dialectic conflict between these two visions. These positions are being assessed in relation to various critical junctures in the development of human right norms and institutions from the creation of the UN to the present. It is based on primary sources collected from UN archives and semi-structured interviews, analyzed through the process-tracing method. In producing a theoretically informed and empirical investigation, the project aims to reframe the terms of the debate across disciplines and allow for the formulation of innovative policy recommendations to help EU states cope with the tension between secular and religious visions domestically and at the UN, in a way that transcends binary or absolutist perspectives dominating academic and public debates.
During the first two years of the project, I have substantially reviewed the relevant literature and audited courses at Columbia University to acquire additional skills, especially knowledge and expertise in human right law and Islamic law. I have conducted archival research at the UN archives in New York and Geneva, as well as the UNESCO archives in Paris. I have drafted and submitted one journal article to Security Dialogue, currently under review (I was asked to ‘revise and resubmit’); I have organised an international workshop at Columbia University on 15 November 2023 on ‘Visions of World Society Beyond the West’. I have edited a Special Issue proposal, based on the contributions to the workshop mentioned above, which has been submitted to the Review of International Studies; I have drafted another journal article that I have presented at the International Studies Association Conference on 3 April 2024 in San Francisco and plan to submit to the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR) in within the month of July 2024; I have benefited from the vibrant environment of Columbia University to share and discuss the preliminary results of my project. A testimony to the promise of the NERELUN project is that I have been formally invited by Columbia as a visiting professor, as soon as I complete it, to offer two courses on the theme of the project.
During the last year of the project I have participated in the European Studies Association Conference in Lille (23-27 August 2025). I have organised a workshop on Religious Worldmaking at Sciences Po on 25-26 November 2025. I have submitted an article explaining how Hezbollah's religious project survives in a secular world, which has been accepted for publication with 'Security Dialogue' on 24 January 2025 and is currently awaiting publication. I have revised the article presented at the ISA conference (mentioned above) and submitted it to the EJIR.
During the last year of the project I have participated in the European Studies Association Conference in Lille (23-27 August 2025). I have organised a workshop on Religious Worldmaking at Sciences Po on 25-26 November 2025. I have submitted an article explaining how Hezbollah's religious project survives in a secular world, which has been accepted for publication with 'Security Dialogue' on 24 January 2025 and is currently awaiting publication. I have revised the article presented at the ISA conference (mentioned above) and submitted it to the EJIR.
The project is proposing an entirely new theory which challenges the mainstream binary of religious and secularism. It is also empirically rich in its stretching from 1945 to the contemporary era.
Peer-reviewed article in Journal: Marina Calculli (forthcoming), Mimetic hedging: Hezbollah's resistance against all odds, Security Dialogue.
Besides academic and non-academic articles, and two international conferences, I am still working on a podcast series and two core projects: 1) a dialogue to be performed in a theatre or public venue, reproducing the dialectic conflict of religious and secular views; 2) a book providing a comprehensive account of NERELUN’s results.
Peer-reviewed article in Journal: Marina Calculli (forthcoming), Mimetic hedging: Hezbollah's resistance against all odds, Security Dialogue.
Besides academic and non-academic articles, and two international conferences, I am still working on a podcast series and two core projects: 1) a dialogue to be performed in a theatre or public venue, reproducing the dialectic conflict of religious and secular views; 2) a book providing a comprehensive account of NERELUN’s results.