Comparative Law and Religion Fellows
Comparative Law and Religion (CLnR) is a field of study developed through collaboration between the Chairs of Canon Law and the International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues (CTSI) at the Faculty of Catholic Theology, University of Bonn. It examines the normative implications of complex constellations of believing, belonging, and behaving, as well as their interactions within and across diverse religious and legal systems.
Comparative Law and Religion Fellows are international scholars whose work exemplifies the diverse directions of this emerging field and who actively contribute to collaborative research projects within our unit.
Prof. Dr. Judith Gruber
Judith Gruber is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Director of the Centre for Liberation Theologies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. Before joining KU Leuven in 2017, Gruber held a tenure-track position at Loyola University New Orleans. She earned her PhD in Theology (summa cum laude) from the University of Salzburg.
She is the author of the award-winning monograph Intercultural Theology: Exploring World Christianity after the Cultural Turn (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; revised English edition 2018), widely regarded as a field-defining contribution to postcolonial theology. Her publication record includes one monograph, a revised translation, fourteen edited or co-edited volumes, more than thirty peer-reviewed journal articles, and numerous contributions to edited volumes. Her article “Revealing Subversions: Theology as Critical Theory” received the Catherine Mowry LaCugna Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America, marking significant international recognition.
Prof. Gruber currently leads and collaborates on several major externally funded research projects (FWO, KU Leuven, Horizon Europe), with total funding exceeding €5.2 million. She serves as Principal Investigator of projects such as Dissenting Church (Research Foundation Flanders - FWO) and Decolonizing the Catholic Church in Congo (KU Leuven Internal Funding), and as work-package co-supervisor in the Horizon Europe project RAISE, which investigates structural racism and social boundary-making in Western Europe. From 2021 to 2024, she was Vice President of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology (INSeCT), where she helped shape a global research agenda on decolonizing theology.
The book Dissenting Church: Exploring the Theological Power of Conflict and Disagreement, edited i.a. by Prof. Gruber and Dr. Bobrowicz, with a contribution from Prof. Hahn, is available in Open Access.
Prof. Dr. Niels Valdemar Vinding
Niels Valdemar Vinding is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, and holds degrees in law (LL.M. in Canon Law, Cardiff 2020) and Islamic Studies (PhD, UCPH 2013). His research focuses on Islam in Europe, law and religion, and the governance of religious diversity in modern welfare states. His work is situated at the intersection of socio-legal studies, Islamic studies, and critical approaches to religion, with particular attention to how states define, regulate, and produce religion through legislation, administration, and public policy.
He has led major externally funded research projects, including an excellence starting grant project Producing Sharia in Context (2021–2025), which examined how Islamic law, ethics, and norms are shaped through interaction with European legal, social, and institutional environments. His research is characterized by a strong interest in epistemology, knowledge production, and the role of state institutions in shaping religious categories and identities.
Prof. Vinding is a senior researcher affiliated with interdisciplinary research environments on society, culture, and law across Europe. He has published widely on Muslim institutions, religious accommodation, and state–religion regimes in Europe, such as Imams in Western Europe: Developments, Transformations and Institutional Challenges (2018), and Sharia and Society: Islamic law, Ethics and Practice in Denmark (2020).
In collaboration with CLnR, he is leading an explorative initiative on new questions in law and religion (see, for example, the workshop on the governance of the multi-religious).
He gave a public lecture in the CLnR seminar series in December 2024.
Dr. Magdalena Dziaczkowska
Magdalena Dziaczkowska is a researcher at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University. Her work focuses on religion and violence, with particular attention to Jewish–Christian relations and intra-Christian contexts. She defended her PhD on narrative memories of Jewish–Catholic relations in 2023 (Lund University) and is currently working on a project on mixed couples in Poland (1935–1957). She has published on Jewish–Christian relations, memory, and violence, including the forthcoming monograph Memory (Un)Divided: The Images of Jewish–Catholic Relations in Interwar Lublin in Oral Histories (Springer, 2026) and the co-edited volume Jews in Dialogue (Brill, 2020).
In collaboration with CLnR, Dr. Dziaczkowska leads the project on "Mapping Abuses in Catholic Lay Movements," funded by Riksbanksjubileumsfond.
She gave a public lecture in the CLnR seminar series in April 2025.
Dr. Jens Van Rompaey
Jens Van Rompaey (°1995, Lier, Belgium) earned a Doctorate in Theology (STD) from KU Leuven in 2025. His research focused on systematic theology, with particular attention to ecclesiology and the dynamics of synodality. He also holds a master’s degree in theology and religious studies (KU Leuven) and a master’s degree in philosophy (University of Antwerp).
Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher (i.e. assistant de recherche) at UCLouvain, collaborating with Prof. Dr. Arnaud Join-Lambert on the practical and local implications of the Catholic Church’s synodal processes. He is affiliated with the Institut de recherche Religions, Spiritualités, Cultures, Sociétés (RSCS).
His research focuses on cultural theology and philosophy, synodality, ecclesiology, and the dynamic interplay between faith and society.
In collaboration with CLnR, starting in Autumn 2026, Dr. Van Rompaey will be leading an FWO-funded project "The Catholic Church as a Narrative and Hermeneutical Community. An Interdisciplinary (Re)Reading of Narrativity" based at the University of Antwerps.
He gave a public lecture in the CLnR Seminar Series in May 2025.