When non-academics ask a researcher in the humanities “what’s your job?”, the answers can be many: “I study”, “I search for documents about archives”, “I write what goes into school textbooks” are among them, but they are never sufficient neither explicative enough of the variety of activities that we, as researchers, do, to develop knowledge.
Most of the time, the reason why we don’t find the right answer is twofold: on the one hand, we don’t know how to communicate not just the results of our research, but its method, its practicalities and mostly, its challenges. On the other hand, we struggle in identifying ourselves within the community of scholars around us, working in the field of religious studies: the community is wide, indeed, it is all over Europe, and deals with a subject which matters a lot for European society, but we lack a common structure, which could enable us to feel more cohesive and supported in the many daily activities we conduct.
RESILIENCE can be a real key to this: it is a great opportunity for all scholars studying religion from the many disciplinary perspectives to have access to sources (libraries, archives, datasets), services (storage) and expertise (e.g. on how to communicate about your research) within a unique framework of facilities specialized in the very field of religious studies.
Personally, I see RESILIENCE as a structure which can lift each of us and the results of our work to a new, higher level of scientific quality and outreach. And I see it as a collective effort put at the service of the whole community, where the only thing that matters is being researchers, and being good at what we do.
RESILIENCE, in the end, is a place of trust, and I believe such an effort is worth the commitment.
– Francesca Cadeddu, Fondazione per le scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII