Conference: Biographies in Times of Crisis. Exploring Religious Narratives of Aids

International Conference, Groningen, The Netherlands

This conference explores the ways in which religion and AIDS have been shaping people’s life-courses and life-histories. Personal, social and institutional biographies have been deeply influenced in many African societies by the ways in which religion has engaged with the disease, influencing their life-trajectories. As religion has played an important role in the shaping of the personal and institutional biographies in the context of  HIV/AIDS, particular forms and styles of ‘narrative disciplining’ can be seen to have taken place. People have ‘learned’ how to phrase the story of their (AIDS-affected) lives or how to formulate their behavioural choices and options that a range of religious institutions are promoting in an attempt to curb the epidemic. In keynote-addresses and paper presentations the conference explores questions such as how are (religious) institutions and practices influencing or changing religio-biographies of the HIV- infected and affected ? And how is the suffering and the ruptures that HIV/AIDS entail expressed in individual and collective biographie.

Initiated by:
- the International Research Network Religion & Aids in Africa (IRNARA)
- the Religion, Identity and Memory Research Group, Faculty of Religious Studies, University of Groningen
- African Studies Centre Leiden
- Educaids

For more information and registration, read the programme. Registrations before December 7.

Conference fees:
1 day: € 20, full conference (2,5 days): € 40.

You can contact Ms Kim Knibbe at ke.knibbe@rug.nl or +31 50 363 4585.

This conference is being organized back-to-back with the seminar 'HIV/Aids from an Islamic perspective' (Leiden, 11 December 2012), a seminar initiated by the Knowledge Centre Religion & Development.