Dr Josef Boehle Dipl Theol., PhD

Dr Josef Boehle

School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion
Fellow and Director of Peacebuilding Programmes, Edward Cadbury Centre

Contact details

Address
ERI Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

My work and research seeks to make a contribution towards improved relations between diverse cultures, religions and civilisations and to present relevant responses to today’s search for a fairer and more peaceful world community. Issues around religion and politics, globalisation, peacebuilding, reconciliation and forgiveness are central to my scholarly work. I am working on projects with a wide variety of NGOs and international organisations.

Qualifications

Dr Boehle received a postgraduate degree in Theology from the University of Tuebingen, Germany and received his PhD from the University of Birmingham in 2001 for his thesis on Inter-religious Co-operation in a Global Age.

Biography

Dr Boehle has worked for international, interreligious organisations and participated in seminars and conferences in many parts of the world. He helped to organise major conferences and summits addressing inter-religious, inter-cultural and inter-civilisational issues, including a Symposium at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Unity in Diversity: Ethical and Spiritual Visions for the World in November 2000 and the High-level Dialogue on Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation for Peace of the UN General Assembly in October 2007.

He is the Director of the Charter for Forgiveness and Reconciliation Project.

As part of his research he participated, for example, in the Millennium NGO Forum at the United Nations in May 2000; the Millennium World Peace Summit at the UN in August 2000; the Conference on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace in June 2005 at the UN; the High-level Dialogue on Interreligious and Intercultural Understanding and Cooperation for Peace of the UN General Assembly (2007); the first, second, fourth and fifth Alliance of Civilizations Forum in Madrid (2008), Istanbul (2009), Doha (2011) and Vienna (2013); the Universal Ethics Summit in South Korea in 2010, and in annual meetings of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS).

Teaching

  • MA/MPhil Module on Religion and Peacebuilding 

Postgraduate supervision

Dr Boehle is available for supervision in the following areas: religion and politics, globalisation, interreligious relations, the interreligious movement, the UN System and religions, religion and peacebuilding, public processes of reconciliation and forgiveness, and religion and development.


Find out more - our PhD Theology and Religion  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Research

Dr Boehle’s field of research is inter-civilisational, inter-religious dialogue and co-operation in a global age, focusing on international organisations and movements. He has a wide experience of transnational civil society and issues of inter-religious co-operation. Presently he researches inter-religious co-operation and international institutions and works on publications on Religion in a Global Age. He seeks to develop new perspectives and models that are needed to enable humane answers to the challenges of globalisation, based on respect for the diversity of cultures and religions in our world community.

He is working on the publication of a book on Religion and Politics in a Global Age: a New Vision for Inter-religious and International Relations and a research project to investigate Religion and Peacebuilding in International Relations. He is teaching a postgraduate module on Religion and Peacebuilding.

Other activities

Publications

  • Religion and Politics in a Global Age: A New Vision for Inter-religious and International Relations,  (I.B. Tauris: academic monograph, 2016).
  • The UN System and Religious Actors in the Context of Global Change, in: CrossCurrents, 60 (3) (Special Issue on Religion and the United Nations) (Blackwell: 2010).
  • Religious NGOs at the UN and the Millennium Development Goals: an Introduction, in: Global Change, Peace and Security, 22 (3) (Routledge: 2010).
  • 'Religions, Civil Society and the UN System' in Studies in Interreligious Dialogue, 17 (1) Jul 2007.
  • Josef Boehle, Religions, Civil Society and the UN System, in: Proceedings of UN Conference on Interfaith Cooperation for Peace’ (Foreign Services Institute, Manila, 2007).
  • 'Inter-religious Cooperation and Global Change: From a Clash of Civilisations to a Dialogue of Civilisations' in Pacifica Review - Peace, Security and Global Change, 14 (3) Oct 2002.

View all publications in research portal