This conference is being supported by UN Academic Impact.

Organising Committee: Associate Professor Catalina Montoya, Rev Dr Yazid Said, Associate Professor Simon Podmore, Dr Taras Khomych, Associate Professor Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, Dr Terry Phillips

2024 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Tutu Centre, established first as the Centre for War and Peace Studies in 2004 and adopting the name of Archbishop Desmond Tutu since 2007. The Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian Christianity,  the Ecumenical Network and the Muslim in Britain Research Group at Liverpool Hope University are joining this landmark celebration. 

This year's conference aims at engaging with how 'Religion' has been perceived to be caught up in processes of conflict, and why various religious traditions provide support for action for justice, reconciliation and conflict resolution. We propose to engage in depth with contemporary meanings of religion and spirituality, different religious traditions, as well as different meanings of conflict and reconciliation. In a context marked by the escalation of conflicts that put the very existence of states into question and their associated human costs, different understandings of these terms impact on how the goal of reconciliation may be interpreted by different groups moving between the secular and the religious. 

The conference covers key dimensions of religion, conflict and reconciliation including, among others:

• The legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu 

• Ongoing conflict in Ukraine and escalation of conflict in the Middle East

• Religious intolerance, nationalism and deadly violence and intertwined with spiritual traditions of peace-building

• The role of religion in (inter)national conflict and geopolitical competition

• Ecological catastrophe/ poly-crisis 

• Contemporary meanings of religion and spirituality more broadly conceived in the light of conflict and peacebuilding

• Religion and the role of contemporary media, representation, and the arts.

For all enquiries, please email: tutu@hope.ac.uk. 

Keynote speakers:

Professor Melissa Raphael, Response by Rev Dr Yazid Said (see his profile here); and

Professor Myroslav Marynovych, Response by Associate Professor Dominika Kurek-Chomycz (see her profile here)

As well as teaching at Leo Baeck College in the areas of modern Jewish thought and Jewish responses to evil and suffering, Melissa Raphael is Professor Emerita (Jewish Theology) at the University of Gloucestershire. She has been the Sherman Lecturer in Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester; the Hussey Lecturer in the Church and the Arts at the University of Oxford, and the British Government’s Foreign Office delegate to the International Task Force on Holocaust Remembrance and Research.  Professor Raphael is the author of numerous articles and books. Her books include Thealogy and Embodiment: The Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sacrality (Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness (Oxford University Press, 1997); The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust (Routledge, 2003); Judaism and the Visual Image: A Jewish Theology of Art (Continuum, 2009), and Religion, Feminism and Idoloclasm: Being and Becoming in the Women’s Liberation Movement (Routledge, 2019). Professor Raphael was invited to speak at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 28, on her recent contribution to Jewish ecotheology, and is also an occasional columnist for The Jewish Chronicle.

Myroslav Marynovych – a President of the Institute of Religion and Society at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, and a Rector’s Adviser (until January 9, 2024, a Vice-Rector for University mission of the same University). In the past, a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (human right monitor group) and a prisoner of conscience (1977–1987). Headed the Amnesty International structures in Ukraine (1991–1996). A former President of the Ukrainian Center of the PEN International (2010–2014). Now, an Honorary President of the Ukrainian PEN-Center. Present roles in civic society: a member of the “First December” Initiative (since 2011) and of the Nestor Group of Ukrainian intellectuals (since 2012). A promoter of inter-ethnic and inter-religious reconciliation and cooperation.

This year, we are also very lucky to host the art Exhibition 'Making With' by Gregory Herbert. Please see a summary below

For accessing the exhibition, please click here

Amidst the rubble of broken symbionts, traces of a resurgence appear, flora pushing through.

Multi-species assemblages signalling, exchanging, building. The fungus that facilitated life on earth, again inspiring new worlds.

Part-time Lecturer in Fine Art at Liverpool Hope University, Gregory Herbert has collaborated with Professor Katie J. Field to explore Field's research on mycorrhizal fungi, including species of fungi that could reverse some of the effects of the climate catastrophe thanks to their ability to function efficiently under high levels of atmospheric CO2.

Taking influence from Interfacial Apoplast, the space between the plant root cell membranes and mycorrhizal fungal hyphal filaments where nutrients are symbiotically exchanged, Herbert has created a speculative portal where we can learn from these cycles of reciprocity and learn to join the sympoiesis.

Gregory Herbert in collaboration with Professor Katie J. Field
Sound Design: Andrew PM Hunt
3D Artist: Sarah Blome
Choreography and Dance: Nicolette Whitley, James Lawrence Henson

Thanks:

Liverpool Hope University.
Reuben Fleming and Colin Pons
The University of Sheffield
Sheffield Hallam University