PPRI Mission


We are developing the Pluralism Politics and Religion Initiative (PPRI) as an ongoing institutional framework. We intend to use it as a way to train students in an international and rigorous way, initiate a collaborative research program, and communicate knowledge about this topic to a broader policy-oriented public.

We plan to gain and disseminate knowledge about socially-embedded differences of religion, culture, and ethnicity across countries. We underscore the critical knowledge of political and legal frameworks in shaping and directing these pluralisms. We recognize that newly-salient religious differences, in particular, require new forms of gathering and communicating knowledge. And we find that working in an ongoing, comparative way is crucial to overcoming national biases in our knowledge.

We will develop a common language for our work through reciprocal visits, small workshops, and the exchange of working papers.


An international research network

The network currently has a "core triangle" involving three institutions to which we will affiliate other researchers chosen for their research expertise.
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A program for training graduate students

We will develop a common program for training graduate students in multidisciplinary approaches to studying issues of pluralism, politics, and religion.
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A collaborative research program

We will develop a research program to identify specific, comparative research projects relating to the overall project theme. Only through comparative research can we assess the relative effects of different political and legal structures
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Communicating knowledge to a broader public

We plan to develop new ways of communicating findings about pluralism to a broader public of professionals and public actors. We will draw not only on our own research but also on the broader knowledge base we share.
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