Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen

Marlene Ringgaard Lorensen

Associate Professor

Primary fields of research

Homiletics (theology, history and practice of preaching), contextual theology, dialogue philosophy, 'other-wise homiletics', ethnographic ecclesiology, refugees' encounter with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark, European preaching practices in light of the refugee situation, authorship of Mikhail Bakhtin in relation to preaching, practical theology, praxis theories.

New collaborative research project 2021-2023: "Complexity and Beyond in Studies of Religiosity in the Nordic Countries" financed by the Finnish Research Council: 

The aim of the network is to develop new and more precise understandings of the characteristics and backgrounds for changes in religiosity at the individual level in the Nordic countries during the last three to four decades and to create a stronger network for collaboration among Nordic researchers in the field.
The core substantive idea is to scrutinise and transcend three dominant theoretical narratives – secularization, individualization and competition – of religiosity in the Nordic countries. We hypothesize that changes in religiosity are consequences of interactions between structural (e.g., the organization of national churches) and individual (e.g., socialization) factors. A complexity framework (Byrne 2002, 2005, Furseth 2018), which presumes that cross-cutting trends in religiosity may occur at different levels and entities and multiple religious forms may exist at the same time at each level, will inform our overall approach. Comparative, mixed methods will be encouraged. We aim:
 To move beyond established theoretical narratives of changes in individuals’ religiosity by identifying developments in the Nordic countries that these narratives struggle to explain.
 To study the varying changes for religiosity that may be associated with structural changes (e.g., church–state relationships), social changes (e.g., immigration) and their interaction.
 To perform mixed-methods comparisons based on existing voluntary organizational and community-based qualitative studies as well as large-scale longitudinal, comparative data.
 To increase Nordic cooperation and research dissemination in articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as in an edited volume published by a high-level international publisher.
 To initiate new research projects based on insights produced by network members.

Current research

1) Theology, history and praxis of Homiletics    

2) Ethnographic ecclesiology including empirical study of the encounter between refugees and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark. Part of the research project: Consumed identities. Ritualized food and the Negotiation of National Identity in the Danish Majority Church and the research project: Reassembling Democracy. Ritual as Cultural Resource in collaboration with Prof. mso, Gitte Buch-Hansen, KU. REDO is financed by the Norwegian Research Council.      

 i samarbejde med Prof.mso. Gitte Buch-Hansen 

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