Who are we

We are the research team for the Religion for Peace: Messengers and Messages for Interreligious Peace project located at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). The institute is based in Hamburg, Germany. As part of this project, we are conducting a multisite online study on messengers and messages for interreligious peace. In particular, we are looking at different messengers and their effect on interreligious cooperation, willingness for contact, and peacebuilding behavior such as advocacy, and interreligious attitudes. The heart of the study is a survey experiment (video peace message) in four different countries: Austria, Greece, Iraq and Nigeria.

Project research collaborators

We are happy to already work together with 4 research collaborators across Iraq, Nigeria and Greece. The researchers come from both academia and practice. Being connected with universities is not a prerequisite, as the GIGA is also an independent research institute.

We are currently looking for interested colleagues based in Austria to support this research project.

Support

You can support us through background knowledge on the case, i.e. literature on Austria and/or context-specific feedback on the survey questions. Furthermore, we urgently need support with contacts with Austrian pastors or clerics, both male and female, who would be interested in recording a peace video message.

Schedule

The start of the online data collection is scheduled for October 2025. We aim to finalize the research design and a first draft of the questionnaire at the end of June, establishing contacts with pastors until the end of August/beginning of September so that we can record the video message until mid-September.

What can we offer

We can offer a collaboration on data collection in the sense that our research collaborator can add survey questions for their own research interest. We can further offer collaboration on publications, both journal articles and policy briefs. This of course depends on your interest and field of study, and we are not turning down general interest in the study and altruistic support.

Interested? - Contact us!
Theodora.benesch@giga-hamburg.de or Julia.koebrich@giga-hamburg.de