Int’l Conf. to Study Role of Religion in Peacebuilding (+Video)
Titled “Religions and Peacebuilding in Third Millennium; Capacities and Challenges”, the conference is organized by the Iranian Peace Studies Scientific Association and is set to be staged in January 2023.
To further discuss the issue, IQNA talked with Mandana Tisheiar, head of the board of the Association.
“Iranian Peace Studies Scientific Association was established in 2015 and during recent years it has tried to develop peace studies in Iran from different aspects,” she said.
The main aim of this conference, she maintained, is to study the role that religions can play to control contemporary tensions and problems. The academic named terrorism, fundamentalism, environmental problems, ethnic tensions, gender tensions, and religious tensions between sects as some of these problems that the world is facing.
The conference will provide an opportunity for different religious thinkers, scholars, and also intellectual elites from different countries to discuss the roles that religions can play to control tensions and bring security and peace to the world, she added.
Asked about the topics of this conference, Tisheiar noted that organizers have tried to choose different topics so as to cover a vast area of subjects. “For example, it is important to see how religious teachings can help produce public peace; what is the idea of religious teachings about tolerance and equality; how can we use religions to stop colonialism and backwardness in different societies; or how we can decrease tensions between ethnic and religious groups in different countries.”
Hence, she continued, researchers and scholars from different social sciences can participate in the event.
Below are the posters of the conference:
July 21, 2022, has been set as the deadline for submitting abstracts that can be written in both English and Persian.
Full papers should be submitted before November 21, 2022. The conference will be staged on January 18 and 19, 2023, both online and in person.
Asked about the impacts of the previous editions of the conference held by the Association, Tisheiar noted that this is the first time that the conference has focused on the subject of religion.
“Previously, my colleagues in the Peace Association did their best to produce peace studies books and articles, which is a new subject, in Iran,” she said.
“Last February, we held our fifth international conference on “Academia and Peacebuilding in Nowruz Cultural Sphere” and it was the first time that we held a conference at the regional level. People from 30 countries in the Nowruz region participated in this conference and it was a very fruitful program to produce two volumes of books in English both of which focus on the role that universities, professors, and students can play in producing peace and prosperity in the regional level.”
Interview by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas
