Prof. Alberto Melloni on the ESFRI Application: "For the Foundation for Religious Studies, now based both in Bologna an Palermo, a Research Infrastructure is the accomplishment of a long effort: since the late Ninties we think that our research needs a larger milieu to be fertile and effective."
He continues: “Like the single research in physics needs a big accelerator to discover the infinitesimal part of an atom of matter, religious history and Religious Studies need scientific tools of a long history in order to understand the single choice and the single move deriving from a religious belief, its profile or its change or its mutation.
Religious Studies are part of the Humanities, but with a peculiar profile: all the actors (institutions, individuals, ideas) consider themselves part of long history, where cultures and doctrines, laws and intentions, art and spirituality are migrating from an era to another one. So research needs a Research Infrastructure which is not simply federating scientific excellence, but is preparing more scientific excellence federating spesialists and their resources.
Violent extremism and hatespeech can find in religions an unexpectd booster or an implacable enely: science has a role in offering to social cohesion and political decisions proper tools to curb radicalization and discrimination.
A Research Infrastructure like RESILIENCE says that the European scientific community is ready for that and aware of it.”