Third-cycle (doctoral) programme in Religious Studies
Interested in doing research within the field of Religious Studies? We offer third-cycle education for doctoral students.
Research in Religious Studies at Linnaeus University has had the right to award doctoral degrees since 2015. While the expertise of the faculty has naturally played an important role in recruiting doctoral students, the subject has also made a point of preserving the breadth that is the very raison d’être of religious studies, as well as maintaining strong knowledge of comparative methods.
In 2024, Gustav Larsson became the first to defend a dissertation in the subject, titled “Positioned Orthodoxies: Debating Islamic faith and practice in contemporary Sweden”
Examples of doctoral projects
- "The use of popular culture in religious education" (Nicole von Rost Biedron)
- "Shaping Shinto: A Multimethod Study in the Digital Aesthetics of Religion" (Martin van der Linden)
- "Religious themes in the writings of the 16th-century Korean Neo-Confucian philosopher, T'oegye Yi Hwang" (Maria Hasfeldt)
- "Activism promoting non-belief in a Pakistani context" (Mustafa Kemal)
Research Groups and Research Schools
In addition to their subject affiliation, the doctoral students are also connected to various centres at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities:
- Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
- Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies
- Global Humanities
- Graduate school in Islamic studies
How do I become a doctoral student in Religious Studies?
When we have the possibility to admit doctoral students, the post is announced at the university website. See Vacancies page
General study plan