On February 13, 2025, the Observatory attended the conference “Digital Religions: Technological and Spiritual Transformations” at the Pati Llimona Civic Center. This event was co-organized by the Office of Religious Affairs (OAR) and the research group Investigations in the Sociology of Religion (ISOR) with the aim of addressing the relationship between digital spaces and spirituality.
During these sessions, discussions have focused on how religious communities are facing the current challenges of digitalization, which young leaders are driving digital transformation and renewal, and the impact this has on religious practice, through spaces designed to promote dissemination and reflection.
During the first day, there were several moments aimed at addressing these topics, such as the inaugural conference “Algorithms, Influencers, and Religious Authority in Cyberspace”, where Gary R. Bunt, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, principal investigator of the Digital British Islam project and co-investigator of the DIGITISLAM project, and Fouad Gehad Marei, researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin, Germany, spoke.
Next, there was a cross-cutting roundtable “Digital Religion: A Multidimensional Phenomenon”, in which Rosa Martínez Cuadros, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, and Antonio De Diego, assistant professor in the Philosophy department at the University of Málaga, participated. In this roundtable, the discussion first focused on various phenomena related to the use of virtual and digital spaces for both religious practice and knowledge, and secondly, on the opportunities and challenges arising in the digital worlds.