Dara Straub

Doctoral student / sholarship holder

CONTACT

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven / Research Unit of Systematic Theology and the Study of Religions

Sint-Michielsstraat 4 / box 3101, B-3000 Leuven

dara.straub@kuleuven.be

RESEARCH PROJECT | DISSERTATION

The doctoral thesis aims to contribute to the contextualisation of European Theology on the hypothesis that Eurocentrism in theology can only be deconstructed by bringing into focus the internal heterogeneity of European theologies themselves. The project chooses a constructivist approach on the postcolonial premise that knowledge is always a product of discursive negotiation formed by power dynamics. Based on the assumption that theological writing is a specific form of theological discourse, it analyses a corpus of journal articles for discourse strategies and narratives that construct theological knowledge. The visualisation in networks and their theological reflection aims to demonstrate entanglements, interactions and developments between players, concepts, and mechanisms in the contexts of and between Irish and German-speaking theologies and thereby allows for the formulation of options for a decolonial practice of doing theology within a European context.

OTHER RESEARCH INTERESTS

  • Theological Discursivity of Caritative Institutions and Christian Social Enterprises
  • Theory of Seelsorge, Pastoral Care and Spiritual Care