University of Aarhus 2005
The Faculty of Theology
Research
In the University of Aarhus’ development contract for 2005, the Faculty of Theology was given special responsibility in the core area: religion as a normative factor. Several researcher groups have therefore intensified their work within a number of existing focus areas that have further potential. The three areas involved are: Christianity in Antiquity; The Bible and Literature; and Religion, Politics and Law.
In the current situation with increasing competition for research funding, it is encouraging to see that the extent of external research funding remained high for yet another year.
Publication activity is high and on the increase. The faculty is working on a publication strategy that aims to identify and highlight professional journals (both Danish and international) and publishing houses/monograph series of particular interest. To achieve this, it is necessary to reduce the number of research publications, while ensuring the quality and high degree of dissemination of knowledge to the relevant target group.
Degree programmes
New academic regulations for the Bachelor’s degree programme in the Study of Religion have created better opportunities for individual, flexible choices while, at the same time, ensuring that all students comply with minimum requirements for employment in upper-secondary schools. Through a productive debate with potential employers and senior external examiners, the Board of Studies has succeeded in creating a sound balance between compulsory material and the understandable wish students have for a flexible scheme that leaves room for personal choices according to interests and employment opportunities.
The Theology degree programmes were restructured in 2003. It is still too early to draw any conclusions about the results, but provisional figures indicate that the dropout rate remains relatively high. There is no doubt that the Theology degree programme, with its requirement for language and grammar competence, and the ability to work philologically with difficult ancient languages such as Greek, Latin and Hebrew, would benefit from an increased emphasis on these subjects in upper-secondary schools. Language teachers at the faculty are therefore actively involved in developing new teaching material, e-learning and other educational initiatives.
Since summer 2005, the degree in Arabic Language and Islamic Culture has been changed to focus on modern language teaching and communication in Arabic. In addition, the degree programme includes modules such as the Middle East Past and Present; Arabic Culture and Literature; and Islam. A course in Classical Arabic is also offered. Some of these subjects are part of a new Bachelor’s degree programme in Arabic and Business Communication offered in collaboration with the Aarhus School of Business, which will be available from February 2007.
A record number of students completed their Master’s degrees in 2005. The number reflects the focused efforts made in recent years to provide increased guidance to students during their last year of study.
There has been a growing interest in the faculty’s degree programmes. The number of enrolments in Theology, which had been decreasing for a number of years, is again on the increase. The Study of Religion is full, and lately, an increasing proportion of the students enrolled had the Study of Religion as their first choice. With the introduction of modern Arabic at the core of the Arabic degree programme, the number of students has increased considerably.
Contribution to the knowledge society
The Faculty of Theology has a long-standing tradition for publishing research findings in the form of popular articles in journals, feature articles in the newspapers, etc. To this should be added the extensive lecturing activity at the People’s University or in parish community centres, for example, where the staff are often invited to speak.
Internationalisation
Since 2005, it has been standard practice at the faculty to offer subjects taught in English. Accordingly, there is a broad range of subjects on offer to visiting students, but the subjects also target Danish students at the faculty. It is an obvious choice at some stage during their studies to participate in subjects taught in English. In that way, the students can not only study a subject and improve their language skills at the same time, but also practise communicating their knowledge in English. This is a challenge they are very likely to face the day they swap their studies for a career outside the university.
To strengthen the international profile and formalise existing collaboration, the faculty has appointed four new honorary professors from the UK, Germany, Norway and Finland. All four professors are associated with specific research projects, including the core area: religion as a normative factor. In the coming years, they will be present at the faculty on a regular basis, in connection with seminars, lectures or PhD courses and guidance.
In 2005, the cross-disciplinary graduate school based at the faculty – Theology and the Study of Religion – initiated collaboration between Nordic graduate schools in a project called: Nordic Network for Doctoral Training in Theology and Religion. The participating graduate school environments are in Oslo, Bergen, Uppsala, Lund, Helsinki, Joensuu and Copenhagen. This collaboration has now been formalised and comprises sharing experience, consultancy and PhD courses, including an inter-Nordic course held every second year. This course targets PhD students in all the above-mentioned graduate school environments. There are plans to extend the collaboration to include several of the Baltic countries.
Quality development
In 2005, the faculty asked the Danish Evaluation Institute (EVA) to review the quality of the faculty’s work. This audit involved representatives from all staff groups and students. In this way, the audit ensured broad responsibility and participation in quality assurance and development. It also brought together those people responsible for preparing an extensive self-evaluation report for EVA. Once this report had been handed in, a panel including Danish and Nordic experts visited the faculty with a view to checking and further investigating the information contained in the report. The evaluations and recommendations of the panel were published in May 2006.
This process aims at finding out how the Faculty of Theology, and the University of Aarhus in general, can best ensure and improve the quality of their research and education activities. The faculty sees the EVA offer for an auditing process as an opportunity to acquire an overview of the strengths and weaknesses in the current efforts to ensure quality. The audit will also make it possible to develop a systematic and internationally acknowledged system for quality work within research and education institutions.
The Faculty of Theology has a strong academic culture for quality assessment in connection with employing staff and the assessment of PhD dissertations, for example. There is also a strong emphasis on a consistently high level of publication of quality research material. The faculty also maintains a very high level of research-based teaching using associate professors and professors throughout the degree programmes – with effect from day one. On the other hand, the procedures for quality work are presumably not always sufficiently systematic and well documented. The faculty will attempt to remedy this situation in the coming years to the extent resources make it possible to reach the goals.
The Faculty is housed in the former orthopaedic hospital, which has had several lecture theatres added.
Facts for 2005
Students
New enrolments: 132
Number of students: 989
Number of PhD students: 24
Number of Bachelors: 121
Number of Masters: 114
Number of PhDs: 7
Staff (full-time equivalent)
Professors: 11
Associate professors: 26
Other academic staff: 28
Technical and administrative staff: 20
Number of doctorates: 1
Number of research publications: 180
Total number of publications: 261
Departments
Department of Biblical Studies
Department of Church History and Practical Theology
Department of Systematic Theology
Department of the Study of Religion
Research centres
Centre for Bioethics
Centre for Grundtvig Studies
Centre for Multireligious Studies
Degree subjects
Theology
Study of Religion
Arabic
There are lots of good places for group activities in the Faculty Building – like this one in front of a ceramic relief specially designed for this building by Jens Birkemose. The relief was planned and prepared in the artist’s studio in France, and made at the Tommerup brickworks.