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Pancasila and Polarization: How Much is Too Much?

Hanny Nadhirah “Who gets to define Pancasila? Or more bluntly, siapa sih yang paling Pancasilais (who is the most Pancasilaist)? This question reminds us of Indonesia’s long history of monopolizing the interpretation of Pancasila, particularly under the Suharto regime, when it became ...

The Entangling “Hyper-Problem” of Polarization

Rezza P. Setiawan Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies Polarization is so pervasive that it touches almost every aspect of our lives, including the issues of religion, environment, social, politics, and economy. Thus, polarization cannot be viewed separately from other ...

Environmental Justice and Polarization

Anthon Jason "In our community, we have our own understanding of energy. For us, energy can mean land. Land is energy, forest is energy. Whereas for the current government, with its energy transition concept, energy is reduced to electricity. This ...

We are among the top 100 programs in the world!

Our doctoral program, Inter-religious Studies (IRS), and master program Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS) of postgraduate school Universitas Gadjah Mada has once again been ranked in the 51-100 range in the world in the Theology, Divinity, and Religious ...

Known as a city of culture and academic accomplishment, the Javanese city of Yogyakarta is a fascinating place to study religion. It is home to several of the most respected public and private universities in Indonesia. In 2006, three of these universities, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), the State Islamic University (Universitas Islam Negeri/UIN) Sunan Kalijaga and Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (UKDW), formed the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS). At the core of the Consortium is the regular doctoral program in Inter-Religious Studies (IRS), which is legally located in the Graduate School of UGM and has been accredited “A” by the Indonesian National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (Badan Akreditasi Nasional Perguruan Tinggi/BAN-PT) since 2016.

Religious studies have become established in academia as a discipline or an academic field of study. While the field of inter-religious studies, understood as focusing on the relations between religions, has grown quickly in the past decade, with textbooks and journals carrying the name starting to appear. Yet, as an academic field of study, both still leave open a wide space of diverse views in terms of their objects, scopes, and methodologies.