OFFICIALLY IN OFFICE

Anna Neumaier takes over professorship for religious studies at CERES

Since September 1, 2025, Anna Neumaier has held the professorship for religious studies at CERES. She has already been working here as a junior professor for the past three years.

Her academic career in religious studies began with a doctoral position at CERES, which she accepted as part of her professional orientation. She successfully completed her dissertation entitled Religion@home? Religion-related online platforms and their use. A Study of New Forms of Contemporary Religiosity. She then worked as a research assistant in the DFG-funded project “Identity in the Face of Religious Plurality. A Qualitative-Reconstructive Study of the Conditions and Consequences of Interreligious Communication” at the Institute for Religious Studies and Religious Education at the University of Bremen. Before taking up the junior professorship at Ruhr University Bochum, she also headed the Competence Center Digital Religious Communication at the Center for Applied Pastoral Research (zap:bochum) at the Catholic Theological Faculty of Ruhr University from 2018 to 2022.

Neumaier's research focuses on various facets of religious practice and communication. These include, in particular, the theory and transformation of religious communitization and religious authority, religious pluralization, and interreligious dialogue and its biographical processing. In addition, she is intensively engaged with the digital dimensions of religion and religiosity.

For example, she is currently leading two research projects at CERES that deal with religious communication in digital spaces. The REDiCON (Religion – Digitality – Confessionality) project examines the connections between religious influencing on social media in German-speaking countries and Christian confessionality. As part of the project Religious and Sociopolitical Communication and Its Reception on TikTok, which is being carried out at CERES, TikTok content from religious influencers from different faith communities and its reception are being analyzed. This project is part of the “Youth, Religion, and Society” (plugether) project, which has been bringing together young people with religious affiliations since 2024 to discuss issues of coexistence in a pluralistic society and enable the joint creation of TikTok videos.

With her appointment to the professorship in religious studies, Anna Neumaier is consistently continuing her academic work at the intersection of religion, society, and digital media, bringing innovative impulses to research and teaching at CERES. We wish her continued success and congratulate her warmly on her appointment.