Global Religious and Interfaith Networks Engage Global Governance

A Conversation with Alberto Melloni

September 3, 2021
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. EDT
Location: Online Zoom Webinar

Relationships among national and international institutions and religious organizations and communities color politics, governance expectations, and daily life in much of the world. The upheavals of the COVID-19 crisis have cast new light on perennial issues of ethics and belief fundamental for institutions and processes of governance. As we move into an unsettling post-COVID-19 era, global religious and interfaith networks aspire to revitalized roles in advancing global agendas. Many questions will arise along the path, including how religious ideals are framed and how contested questions—theological, philosophical, and practical—are to be addressed.

With the ambitious G20 Interfaith Forum in Bologna fast approaching (September 12-14), Professor Alberto Melloni explored these challenges and questions in conversation with Katherine Marshall. The exchange is part of a new Berkley Center project centered on global religious and interfaith networks—their strengths, weaknesses, practical ways to heighten their policy impact in the years ahead. Insights from this and other events in the series will serve as background for a strategy meeting of religious and interfaith leaders in spring 2022.

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Professor Alberto Melloni speaking at Georgetown University in 2013.

Participants

Katherine Marshall Toggle

About Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Katherine Marshall's Profile

Alberto Melloni Toggle

About Alberto Melloni

Alberto Melloni is full professor of History of Christianity at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, director of Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII (Fscire), and chair holder of the UNESCO Chair on Religious Pluralism and Peace at the University of Bologna. He spearheaded the establishment of the European Academy of Religion, a leading research platform which includes institutions, associations, academies, publishers, and reviews concerned with the study of religion. Melloni has written more than 400 articles and several books on religious history. Melloni and Fscire are the Italian hosts for the 2021 G20 Interfaith Forum.

Alberto Melloni's Profile