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2025 Workshop: Religion and spirituality in the sacred geography of the (post-)communist worlds

Seventh international workshop, October 20–22, 2025

Religion and spirituality in the sacred geography of the (post-)communist worlds

Venue: Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Vasari Room, Paris

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Programme

Monday, October 20

Opening Session: Welcome address & Keynote speech
9.30 Welcome Address
by Stéphane DUDOIGNON (CNRS/GSRL) & Marie-Paule HILLE (EHESS/CCJ, Paris)

Session 1
The Periphery as a metonymy of the Whole

Chair: Marie-Paule HILLE (EHESS/CCJ, Paris)

10.00 Pascal BOURDEAUX
EPHE/GSRL, Paris
pascal.bourdeaux@ephe.psl.eu
A historical reflection on the gradual reintegration of religious South Vietnam into Vietnamese national discourse since the end of the war in 1975
10.30 NAKANISHI Tatsuya
Kyoto University, Institute for Research in Humanities
Khaṭāʾī sanctifies Khaṭāy:
The Hui legend of ʿAlī Bābā and the Forty Mendicants
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Nodirjon ABDULAHATOV
Ferghana Pedagogical Education Centre
Resurrecting and nationalising Muslim sainthood in the Ferghana Valley, since 1991
11.45 Aurore DUMONT
EHESS/CCJ, Paris
Negotiating territorial and ethnic belonging,
through the construction and worship of sacred sites in Inner Mongolia
12.15 Benoît FILOU
EPHE, Paris
Absheron, from periphery of Shia Islam to centre of Azerbaijani national identity?
13.00 Luncheon

Session 2
The society vs. the state? Undergrounds revisited

Chair: Thierry ZARCONE (CNRS/GSRL, Paris)

14.30

Valeria GAZIZOVA
Ruprecht-Karl University, Heidelberg & GSRL

Memories of the Soviet Buddhist (under)ground:
New Kalmyk hagiographies encoded in the land

15.00

Jeanne (Zhanna) KORMINA
Erevan Centre for International Education

Taming charisma:
The post-Soviet life of Orthodox Soviet saints

15.30

Coffee break

15.45

Yulia SAVOSTINA
University of Bern

Politicising sacred space:
Legends and political life of the Amarbayasgalant Monastery

16.15

Agnieszka HALEMBA
Institute of Archaeology & Ethnology, Warsaw

Degrees of martyrdom, degrees of holiness:
The underground Greek Catholic Church and the cult of martyrs in Ukrainian Transcarpathia

17.00

Closure of the session

19.30

Dinner

Tuesday, October 21

Session 3
Hagiography as competition for space

Chair: Tommaso PREVIATO (Friedrich-Alexander University of Nuremberg–Erlangen)

10.00

Tomas KAČERAUSKAS
Vilnius Gediminas Technical University

Vilnius saints from anthropological and phenomenological points of view

10.30

Thierry ZARCONE
CNRS/GSRL, Paris

Sainthood and oasis identity:
Sufi dynasties and late-20th -century saint veneration in Yarkand

11.00

Coffee break

11.15

Sergei SHTYRKOV
Erevan Centre for International Education

Saint Anastasia of Vladikavkaz:
Memory of a Russian holy fool in a Soviet and Post-Soviet Ossetian city

11.45

Virginie VATÉ
CNRS/GSRL, Paris
Marie-Amélie SALABELLE
Independent scholar

Herman of Alaska: A Saint at the Heart of Multiple Claims

12.15

Stéphane DUDOIGNON
CNRS/GSRL, Paris

‘Discourse of place’ as a polyphony:
Muslim sanctuaries in Tajikistan’s post-Soviet local lore

13.00

Luncheon

Session 4
The ‘Soviet century’: a spiritual one?

Chair: Timothy GROSE (Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, MN)

14.30 Marie-Paule HILLE
EHESS/CCJ, Paris
Re-sacralising territory:
Spatial transformations and Sufi heritage in post-Mao China
(through a Sinophone Muslim community of Southern Gansu, 1979–2014)
15.00 Clément JACQUEMOUD
GSRL, Paris
The divine Altai or the Earth-Water:
The construction of a sacred territory in the early Soviet period
15.30 Coffee break
 

15.45

Dmitriy OPARIN
Montaigne University of Bordeaux
Memories of Shamanic miracles in Soviet Chukotka:
Ritual fragmentation and nostalgia in the post-Soviet era
16.15 Jesko SCHMOLLER
Humboldt University, Berlin
Garifulla Kiekov (1861–1918) on the screen:
A nationalist reading of the Bashkir Muslim sacred landscape
17.00 Closure of the session
19.30 Dinner

Wednesday, October 22

Session 5
Sainthood in the move

Chair: Stéphane DUDOIGNON (CNRS/GSRL, Paris)

10.00 Anne DALLES-MARÉCHAL
Jean Monnet University of St Étienne & GSRL
Conversion of places and circulation of religion:
Religion and territory in Russian-speaking Evangelical Churches of the Amur region
10.30 Tim GROSE
R. Hulman Inst. of Technology, Terre Haute, MN
Re-consecration after revolution:
Building and restoring sacred Islamic space in the Uyghur homeland during the Reform Era
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Aleksandr LVOV
Independent researcher, Jerusalem
From sacred text to sacred site:
Descendants of Russian Judaisers from Azerbaijan in search of a usable past
11.45 Detelina TOCHEVA
CNRS/GSRL, Paris
Saint Seraphim the miracle worker of Sofia:
At the crossroads of clashing spiritual-political agendas
12.15 Shamil SHIKHALIEV
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna
Muslim sacred geography and its transformation in post-Soviet Daghestan
13.00 Luncheon

Session 6
Nature, Supra-Nature

Chair: Aurore DUMONT (EHESS/CCJ, Paris)

14.30 Tommaso PREVIATO
Friedrich-Alexander U., Erlangen–Nuremberg
Lunar asterism, self-purification and immortality in the mystical poetry of a Chinese branch of Qadiri Sufism
15.00 Isabelle CHARLEUX
CNRS/GSRL, Paris
New rituals in contemporary Mongolian pilgrimage:
Harnessing Energi from natural elements
15.30 Coffee break
15.45 Allen J. FRANK
Independent scholar, Takoma Park, MD
Mari sacred groves, deforestation and forced labour during the Second World War
16.30

Closure of the workshop

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Red Gold (October 17, 2025). 2025 Workshop: Religion and spirituality in the sacred geography of the (post-)communist worlds. RedGold. Retrieved February 18, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14z9c


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