Dr. Agnieszka Zagańczyk-Neufeld

Alfried Krupp Junior Fellow
(October 2021 - September 2022) 

  • Study of Political Science and Cultural Sciences at the University of Warsaw and European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
  • PhD in History in Marburg and Bochum
  • Assistant Professor, Chair of East European History, Ruhr University Bochum

Fellow project: Sects in Russia 1800-1917: A Social History of the Freedom of Faith

The socially and politically significant religious dissent was characteristic not only of West European and US-American societies. At the end of the 19th century, dissenters who separated from the Russian Orthodox Church made up approximately ten percent of the population in Russia. The project addresses this phenomenon from a socio-historical, and a praxeological perspective. Religious dissent is understood as a process of emancipation and pluralization. Since the dissenters in Russia did not develop a substantial writing culture, the project is dedicated to their religiously motivated social practices on five levels of action: flight and migration, body practices, economic practices, conscientious objection, and norm-building process with stabilizing effects on the society as a whole. The study will thereby contribute to the still deficient research on the history of freedom in Russia.