This research area focuses on agents, notions, practices, and institutions of law and governance. It explores the act of turning to religion as an element of identity building and power politics past and present.

This area covers the following research focuses and potential dissertation topics:

• protest and contestation, and the role of oral and written communication;
• regime adaptation, transformation, and consolidation (e.g. democratic transformation and/or consolidation of authoritarian rule);
• institution building;
• public and private spheres; civil society;
• alternative visions of "good governance";
• secularisation processes and the challenge of secularism.

Selected projects:

• Voluntary Work in Syria in the Field of Environment Protection
• Public Debates on Religious Freedom, Blasphemy and Deviance in Contemporary Malaysia and Indonesia