This week, I had the honour to submit, as Principal Investigator of a 10-teams international consortium, an application for the Horizon 2020 call on “Religious Diversity in Europe”. Our project is focused on the analysis of areas of religious controversy and religious coexistence in Europe, to better understand the roots of religious and anti-religious hate, and to propose policy recommendations and educational programs to deal with religion-related controversies.

Although I have already been PI in a medium size project (Searching for Alternative Communitarianism, Religion and Economic Development – SACRED), an Horizon project is undoubtedly an higher level challenge. Moreover, because of the scarcity of calls on religion-related matters, virtually all European scholars dealing with religion were apparently working on the same call. So, well, let’s cross the fingers…