HERILIGION focuses on the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices in relation to religious and secular experiences connected to these, and thus explores secular and religious forms of sacralization linking past, present and future. Since World War II heritage is increasingly seen as defining identities in times of change. The formation and proliferation of the idea of heritage constitutes one particular use of the past, especially when applied to religious sites, objects and practices. HERRILIGION seeks to understand the consequences of the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices which were not considered heritage before. Where the object of heritage is experienced as religious, heritagization may lead to tensions and conflicts as it involves an explicitly secular gaze that sacralizes non-religious aspects of religious sites, objects and practices in a cultural, historical, or otherwise secular, immanent frame. Sometimes this creates tensions between religious and secular forms of sacralizing heritage. As heritage and religion are studied by separate disciplines and subject to different policies, this process is poorly understood ? both theoretically and practically. Combining these two bodies of knowledge HERILIGION will produce new insight which can be used to understand, manage and defuse tensions, benefiting both religious and heritage constituencies in Europe. HERILIGION will do that by investigating how the heritagization of religious sites, objects and practices relates to religious and secular experiences connected to these; and to secular and religious forms of sacralization linking past, present and future, using primarily ethnographic methods. The research will take place at religious and heritage sites in Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and the UK, or would focus on emerging practical heritage (so-called intangible cultural heritage) in these countries. HERILIGION will compare these places with each other in order to offer a more general, representative theoretical analysis of heritagization in Europe.

Piracy has returned to the list of urgent problems facing Europe in the last decade. Global shipping has literally been held hostage to bands of pirates around the Horn of Africa and the waters of West-Africa. Yet prosecuting piracy is complicated by overlapping jurisdictions and complicated mechanisms for enforcing international law. What can we learn from how maritime conflicts were managed in the past? Maritime Conflict Management (MCM) comprises of conflict enforcement (naval warfare, privateering, piracy and blockades), conflict resolution (formal judicial and administrative procedures and informal or private means) and conflict avoidance (negotiations). What significance did MCM have in shaping the standards of diplomacy and international law in pre-modern Atlantic Europe (1200-1600)? The goal of this program is to create an international platform for the study of the methodological problems linked to an analysis of the various manifestations of MCM in pre-modern Atlantic Europe. Attention will be given primarily to the ways in which MCM changes and adapts when existing traditions collide with new political and economic realities. Set against the background of changing political and commercial settings, the central questions of this program revolve around the necessity of commercial interdependence on the one hand and the shifts in the interests of states, regions, and towns on the other. The study of these dynamics will clarify the continuities and changes in MCM along Europe’s Atlantic coast. The ways in which Atlantic MCM was similar – or not – to both Mediterranean and Baltic conflict management is a key element.