Evelyn Reuter studied ethnology, theology and Southeast European Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (2007-2011) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (2011-2016). She completed her doctorate in Jena at the interface of Southeast European Studies and Religious Studies. Her study was published in 2021 under the title "Die Mehrdeutigkeit geteilter religiöser Orte. An ethnographic case study of the Sveti Naum Monastery in Ohrid (Macedonia)" in the rerum religionum series of the transcript publishing house. As a lecturer at the universities of Jena, Berlin (HU) and Bremen (2019-2022), she taught Bachelor's and Master's students of South Slavic Studies, Religious Studies, Ethnology and related subjects. In addition to presentations at international conferences, she has also been invited to give lectures at various summer schools and study days, including at the Ferdowsi University of Mashad (Iran), the Kiril i Metodij University of Skopje (North Macedonia), Tokyo University (Japan), the University of Graz (Austria) and the University of Basel (Switzerland) to present her expertise. She was a visiting scholar at the Leibnitz Institute of European History (2019), at the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University in Tokyo (2022-2023) and in the research focus "Dimensions of Europe" at the University of Graz (2023-2024). In addition to her academic work, she is also involved in interreligious dialogue in Munich and in the Arbeitskreis Mittelbau (AKM) of the German Association for Religious Studies (DVRW). Since June 2024, she has been a member of staff at the Chair of Religious Studies with a focus on Islam at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. She is planning a research project on Sufism in post-socialist Southeast Europe.
Research interests and areas of specialisation:
- History of religion in Southeast Europe (especially in the post-Ottoman and post-socialist present)
- Religious diversity (governance, negotiation of majorities and minorities, ethno-religious groups)
- Sufi orders
- Orthodox churches
- Interreligious contacts and dialogues
- Concepts of religion
- Theories of space (especially shared religious places)
- Qualitative and empirical research methods (field research, situational analysis, discourse analysis, analysis of digital media)
Publications (selection):
- Cem Kara, Evelyn Reuter, Zsófia Turóczy (eds.): Entangled Sufism in (post-)Ottoman Europe. Cross-Disciplinary Approaches. (Eingereicht bei Routledge Sufi Series)
- Evelyn Reuter: Dekonstruktion von “Religion” als Kulturmuster. Säkulare Funktionen von religiösen Orten [Deconstruction of “Religion” as Cultural Pattern. Secular Functions of Pilgrimages]. In: Auffahrt, Christoph & Trein, Lorenz (eds.): Säkulare Religion. Series “Religion: Debatten und Reflexionen” Mohr Siebeck 2024, pp. 179-204. (im Druck)
- Evelyn Reuter: Multi-sited Field Research on a Nexus in Religioscape. In: Fieldwork in Religion 19/1. Special Issue Multidisciplinary Approaches to Shared Religious Places: Insights from Southeastern Europe, ed. by Gianfranco Bria and Giuseppe Tateo, 2024, pp. 42-67.
- Dorina Dragnea, Emmanouil Ger. Varvounis, Evelyn Reuter, Petko Hristov, Susan Sorek (eds.) (2023): Pilgrimage in the Christian Balkan World. The Path to Touch the Sacred and Holy, Turnhout: Brepols.
- Evelyn Reuter (2021): Die Mehrdeutigkeit geteilter religiöser Orte. Eine ethnographische Fallstudie zum Kloster Sveti Naum in Ohrid (Mazedonien) [The Ambiguity of Shared Religious Places. An Ethnographic Case Study about the Monastery Sveti Naum in Ohrid Macedonia]. Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag.
- Evelyn Reuter (2021): „Religion“ in Südosteuropastudien. Ein Aufruf zum intensiveren interdisziplinären Dialog zwischen Religionswissenschaft und Regionalstudien [“Religion” in Southeast European Studies. A Call for a more Intensive Interdisciplinary Dialogue between Studies of Religion and Area Studies]. In: Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft [Online] 16/2021. https://doi.org/10.4000/zjr.1685
- Evelyn Reuter (2021): Touristification as a Strategy for Peaceful Coexistence: The Case Study of the Sveti Naum Monastery (Macedonia). In: Marian Burchardt & Mariachiara Giorda (eds.): Geographies of Encounter. The Making and Unmaking of Multi-Religious Spaces. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 155-178.
- Evelyn Reuter (2020): The Socialist Impact on the Christian-Muslim Shared St Naum Monastery. In: Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 40 (2), 77-94. https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol40/iss2/7
- Evelyn Reuter (2019): Gegenwärtige Aushandlungsprozesse im Netzwerk der Bektaschis Makedoniens. Dynamiken des organisationalen Feldes einer religiösen Minderheit [Contemporary Negotiation Processes in the Network of the Bektashis of Macedonia. Dynamics of the Organisational Field of a Religious Minority]. In: Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 55 (2), 219-239.