The aim of this conference is to analyse the relationship between spatial settings or constructions on the one hand and the ways past societies organised religious diversity on the other. Religions are always located in a certain cultural and spatial environment, but often tend to locate (or translocate) themselves beyond that original setting. Furthermore, many religious traditions show the common trait that they are not only tied to or associated with the one area its respective adherent live in, but are in fact bilocal or even “multilocal”, as they closely relate to various spatial centres or plains at once. Religious diversity or plurality on the other hand not only refers to the different beliefs of people, but also to the environments they are located in. The diversity of religions in the same space – be it at religious centres, at contact zones between religions or at imagined spaces – and the exchanges or other forms of contact it generated will be analysed in a series of settings within and between Asia and Europe.
