Research and Teaching Profile

Forschungs- und Lehrprofil auf Deutsch.

Cultural studies perspective

The starting point of my work is a broad cultural studies perspective. Thinking and working in cultural studies consists of posing questions to a material as precisely as possible using theoretical concepts in application of a skill that has been confidently mastered. The fundamental perspective of cultural studies is therefore that of embedding concrete questions in a “network of conceptual references” (Mohn 2016, 143). Through such cultural studies terms, which are not to be understood as real definitions but as “heuristic search terms”, “relational conceptual experimental arrangements” are created (Mohn 2016, 143). These are related to a “political perspective” that understands culture as a “field of power relations” in which social identities (race, class, gender/sexuality, religion, etc.) are intersectionally and conflictually negotiated and repeatedly hegemonically fixed (cf. Marchart 2018, 16).

In recent years, I have published various general research articles on questions of cultural studies theory and method: on the problem of translation (Hermann 2015b; 2016a), on the diversity of cultural studies theorising (Hermann 2018b; 2022a), on comparison (Winnebeck/Sutter/Hermann/Antweiler/Conermann 2021), on world society theory (Hermann 2021a; Forthcoming b), and on the insider/outsider problem (Hermann/Priester 2020). In teaching, this cultural studies perspective underlies my teaching concepts and is specifically addressed in courses such as “Comparative Religion and Culture”, “Fiction and Religion”, or “Sociology of Religion and Multiple Secularities”.

Global History of Religion

In religious studies, the research activities of the Chair of Religion and Society are primarily directed towards the study of the global history of religion. This approach, which has been developed by different authors since about the late 2000s (Kollmar-Paulenz 2007, 2013; Hermann 2011, Bergunder 2012; Maltese/Strube 2021), combines cultural studies, post-structuralist, sociological and postcolonial approaches to create a new self-understanding of the study of religions. I myself have contributed to this project over the past 10 years, building upon sociological systems theory (Hermann 2011; 2016), a post-structuralist perspective on the problem of translation (Hermann 2016) and Burkhard Gladigow's cultural studies perspective on religion (Hermann 2021). My monograph on Unterscheidungen der Religion (“distinctions of religion”) attempts to provide suggestions for dealing with fundamental problems of a global history of religion (Hermann 2015).

In this context, I am currently working on the following projects and research initiatives:

• History of Religion in South and Southeast Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries (with a focus on Sri Lanka, Thailand, and the Philippines)
  From the perspective of a global history of religion, I have published on ‘religion’ as a global category and the relationship between religion and science in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines (Hermann 2011, 2013, 2015a, 2015c; Streicher/Hermann 2019). A DFG project on “Independent Catholic Movements in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Asia” (2016-2021), led by me, has highlighted the importance of South-South contacts between independent Catholic movements in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, as well as their orientation towards a global colonial public sphere (Hermann 2016c, 2021b). A monograph resulting from the project (Jiang 2022 [in press]) presents in detail for the first time the history of independent Catholics in Sri Lanka in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

• Translation as a theoretical problem of a global history of religion
  Building on the projects of recent years as well as some recent M.A. theses, we are currently designing a DFG project (Sachmittelbeihilfe) on translation as a theoretical problem of a global history of religion based on empirical studies of Buddhism, Christianity and Hinduism in Sri Lanka around 1900. Among other things, the focus is on the translation work of the Bhikkhu Nyānatiloka Mahāthera (Anton Walther Florus Gueth).

• Periodicals as Media of Global Religious History, ca. 1830-1940
  The starting point of this project is the thesis that the periodical is the decisive medium of global religious history in the 19th and early 20th centuries and provides the media context for the establishment of ‘religion’ as a global category (cf. among others Koschorke/Hermann 2018). A DFG research group (“Periodicals as Media of Global Religious History in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, with Prof. Dr. Michael Bergunder [Heidelberg], among others; planned submission of the outline at the end of 2022) is supposed to conduct basic research on this and create as comprehensive a database as possible of digitised periodicals (or digitise them). The relationship between religion and science in particular represents a central aspect of this global history of religion, and is negotiated in journals worldwide.
  Another planned SNF and DFG project on “Alternative Religious Journals in the German-Speaking World, 1850-1950” (in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mohn [Basel] and Dr. Stephanie Gripentrog-Schedel [Kiel]) will deal with German-language religious journals in the context of European religious history between 1830-1945. The focus will initially be on the reception and early journals of Buddhism (Prof. Mohn), esoteric and occult journals (Dr. Gripentrog-Schedel), as well as free religious, free-thinking and non-religious periodicals (Prof. Hermann). The role of the medium ‘periodical’ for the formation of alternative religious milieus in Europe is to be examined comprehensively and comparatively.

• Consolidation of a scientific network. Network and publication of a handbook on Philippine religious history: New Perspectives on Religion in the Philippines (2015-2023)
  The Philippines has always been a crossroads of diverse religious encounters: between indigenous religions, Islam, Iberian and American Catholicism, Protestantism, indigenous Christian and non-Christian traditions, as well as various Charismatic movements. At the same time, it has been a marginal space, at the geographical margin of Asia and the intellectual margins of scholarship on religion in Southeast Asia and the study of Christianity and Islam. The network has established a space at the American Academy of Religion (AAR) for presenting and discussing innovative research on religion in the Philippines and incorporate new perspectives in the study of its religious history. It will contribute to understanding the Philippines not as a marginal space, but as an important node in a global history of transregional and transcontinental religious interactions. Building on the AAR seminar (which ran from 2015 to 2019), the project now has a clear goal: publishing an extensive edited volume on New Perspectives on Religion in the Philippines - where no such volume currently exists.

In addition to this research and teaching activity in study of religion, I work with varying intensity on the following inter- and transdisciplinary topics:

The history and present of documentary media

I work in research and teaching on documentary media, especially on documentary film as a non-fictional medium. This theoretical, empirical and partly practical research is interested in theories of documentary and documentary film between testimony and visual evidence, in the use of documentary media in religious contexts and in film and video as scientific media. I am particularly interested in the history of religion in modernity from the perspective of a history of technology and media. In recent years I have taught seminars on the media history of documentary film, documentary film between immersion and deconstruction, fact and fiction in documentary film, documentary films on the Holocaust, documentary as a cultural technique and documentary film as a medium of social criticism.

• Book project: Religious Evidences: Audiovisual Media, the Non-Fictional, and the Production of the Religious Real [working title]
  In this project on the significance of documentary media for the theory of religion and the modern history of religion, I am concerned with audio-visual media, especially photography as a religious mass medium in the first half and the moving image as a religious mass medium in the second half of the 20th century. My concern here is the significance of the availability of technical reproduction media with a claim to ‘documentary’ and ‘authentic’ representations of sound, image, and film in the context of the religious field. The religious use of audio-visual media in modernity will thus be analysed in comparison with, but also in continuity and discontinuity with, other and earlier religious media practices. This will be explored through a threefold analytical perspective: through an analysis of religious media products including their production and distribution process, through studies of their presentation in religious and ritual settings, and through media reception studies. Continuing a study of evangelical-charismatic documentaries and their reception during a religious film screening tour in 2012, I will focus on the role of the "documentary" in the contemporary religious landscape. In addition to empirical studies, the focus will be on a contrastive reading of the theoretical discourse on documentary film and the religion-theoretical tradition.
  Preliminary results are available in Hermann 2016b, 2017, 2019b, 2022b and Hermann/Lokshina 2019.

• Asymmetric Dependency in Historical and Contemporary Documentary Films
  As explored by F. Declich and M. Rodet in their recent article “African Slavery in Documentary Films” (2020), the historical investigation of transatlantic slavery through the medium of documentary film has become an important aspect of slavery studies over the last decade. But even more generally, one could say that throughout its history the documentary film has been an important medium of the exploration and documentation of relations of asymmetric dependency. An engagement with this history and with contemporary films that continue this legacy promises important contributions to research perspectives at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Documentary films are valuable as a tool of public history, but they can also serve to convey embodied knowledge and sensory experience and thus help us investigate, as ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall has stressed, the “social aesthetics” of particular circumstances. They enable a sensory ethnography beyond the text that explores social relations in light of aisthetic hierarchies and somatic experiences. The film “A Woman Captured” (Egy nő fogságban, Hungary 2017, 89 min.), for example, tells the story of Marish, a woman who for ten years has worked in a Hungarian family in what the filmmaker describes as “modern day slavery”. It paints a haunting portrait of the scars that a decade lived in dependency inscribes on a person's body and face. This project wants to investigate documentary film as a valuable research instrument for dependency studies. In addition, I want to push the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies to explore this aspect by screening and discussing particularly relevant films among scholars and with the wider public.
  Some preliminary thoughts on the project have been published as Hermann 2021c.

Charisma as a key concept for cultural studies and interdisciplinary research

“Charisma”, a term that can be traced back to the work of Max Weber as a social and cultural science concept, can serve particularly well to forge interdisciplinary links between experimental psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and the traditions of the social and cultural sciences. In order to explore this thesis, I have conducted a series of events since 2017 together with the cognitive scientist Prof. Dr. Cordula Vesper (Aarhus) and a larger interdisciplinary group of colleagues.

The aim of this research is currently a special issue of the journal Religion, Brain, and Behavior on this topic (delayed by the Corona pandemic, work on this is to be resumed in the context of a workshop in Leipzig in 2023).

A workshop on the “Cognitive Science of Religion” was held in July 2017 (with C. Vesper, D. Johannsen, S. Schüler) and two conferences were held in summer 2018 and summer 2019 (conceived with C. Vesper) at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) at Bielefeld University (funded by the ZiF and the DFG): “Charismatic Authority: Exploring Religion and Embodied Social Interaction in Cognitive and Cultural Studies” (31.7-4.8.2018) / “Measuring Charismatic Expression: Towards an Integrated Perspective from Cultural and Cognitive Studies” (29.7-2.8.2019). The events focused on questions such as: Why are certain people considered charismatic? What makes them charismatic? How do they create and maintain that special role in their community? Can we measure these characteristics with sufficient scientific precision to find useful answers to the underlying mechanisms?  How can the expression of charismatic traits be identified, measured, and experimentally induced?

In October 2017, a (later rejected) proposal “Narrative and Cognitive Patterns of Charismatic Authority: Towards an Understanding and Explanation of Popular Movements in Contemporary Europe” (VW Foundation, Challenges for Europe, with C. Vesper, D. Johannsen, S. Schüler) was submitted.

In teaching, I have worked on the topic in seminars such as “Charisma: Theory and Empirical Study of a Key Concept in Religious Studies”.

Game Studies: Analog Tabletop Role-Playing Games in the Digital Age

Since 2019, I have been pursuing research and teaching projects in the context of interdisciplinary (analogue) games studies with a focus on tabletop role-playing games as well as on the digitisation of this tradition of analogue games. While the 2018 handbook Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations summarises in a certain sense the state of the research field 'before digitisation', more recent publications such as Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop RPGs and Fandom (2021) and Watch Us Roll: Essays on Actual Play and Performance in Tabletop Role-Playing Games (2021) refer to the current transformations of this field of popular culture. In particular, the game mediated via videoconferencing, which takes its place alongside the game in presence at the gaming table, the use of digital platforms (so-called virtual table tops) as well as the production of tabletop role-playing games as entertainment in (streaming) videos and podcasts (Critical Role, The Adventure Zone) reveal the profound changes to which this field of research is currently subject.

In research on this field, my own interests are currently focused on digital character records (Hermann/Reininghaus 2021, Forthcoming), online communities on Discord (Hermann i.V. a), religion in the history and present of tabletop role-playing games (Hermann Forthcoming a), postcolonial utopias and (post-apocalypses) in role-playing games and on actual play podcasts (Hermann i.V. b).

In teaching, I have covered topics from game studies in seminars such as “From the Kriegsspielapparat to the Twitch Stream: Transmedial Narrative Cultures of Tabletop Roleplaying in Global Perspective” and “Introduction to Game Studies”.

A planned research group “Analog Utopias: Games, Communities, and Intellectual Encounters” was proposed (and later rejected) as a focus group at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin in January 2022. An application for implementation in another form (e.g. as a group at the ZiF Bielefeld) is being planned. Together with Prof. Dr. E. Friedman, Prof. Dr. E. Torner, Prof. Dr. E. Bettocchi and Prof. Dr. N. Altice, analog games are to be researched as resources for utopian thinking in the digital age. Analog games can be be understood as a unique means to prototype as well as simulate social relations in rapid design processes and to create ad-hoc communities around intersubjective play. Within a digital society, we want to question the limits of digitality and the utopian potentials of the analog through the possibilities and fantasies of a strengthened analog gaming sphere.

Interfaces, Accessibility, and Disability Studies

The field of accessibility and interface studies is an innovative subfield not only of media studies but of cultural studies in general. Technology and digitalisation research are combined here in a particularly interesting way with anthropological questions about human abilities, about their development over the course of life, and about cultural and individual differences.

• Outline for a Research Training Group “Interfaces: Schnittstellen kultureller Differenz” (with PD Dr. C. Ernst and Prof. Dr. O. Ruf)
  On the basis of interdisciplinary cooperation, I am working on a joint project on the topic “Interfaces: Schnittstellen kultureller Differenz” (conceived together with C. Ernst and O. Ruf) with colleagues at the University of Bonn as well as the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and the TH Cologne. The project, currently planned as a DFG Research Training Group, is based on the idea of understanding interfaces as the essential site of negotiation for human/machine relations in an increasingly globalised digital media culture. The processing and analysis of cultural difference as a dimension that shapes interaction with user interfaces represents an important research desideratum in cultural and media studies. In particular, it is necessary to relate a media and technical universalism to ideas of cultural particularity. For we increasingly encounter cultures and cultural differences as mediated via interfaces. In the design of interfaces, which is itself a culturally embedded process, a translation of cultural elements into an "explicit culture" (J. Renn) necessarily takes place. Interfaces are therefore always (also) an expression of cultures that have become explicit. In the history of their use, (partly implicit) performative cultures are attached to these interfaces, which can be researched as interface cultures (and thus made explicit again). The Research Training Group will take up this basic consideration on three levels: 1) in the attempt to describe this process theoretically and to closely link media cultural studies and interface studies within the framework of contributions to a new interface theory; 2) in the historical and contemporary media ethnographic research of processes of interface design; 3) in the media ethnographic research of interface cultures. In particular, three modalities of the interface will be considered: Touch interfaces, audio interfaces, and graphical interfaces.

• Project: "Interfacing the Crises: Materializing and Representing Challenges for a Vulnerable Europe" (mit Prof. Dr. J. Stenzel, Dr. S. Priester, Prof. Dr. M. Thiemann und Prof. Dr. C. Vesper)
  The project (submitted to the VW-Stiftung in June 2020 [and eventually rejected]) wants to investigate how the challenges presented by four crises – the financial, refugee, pandemic, and climate crises – are being materialized, represented, and negotiated in public spaces on various levels of the social (direct interaction, movements, organizations, digital platforms, and society). Each of these crises exposes Europe as a vulnerable entity and implies challenges to be addressed that have taken on a high urgency in public discourse. Despite their overwhelming social presence, these crises are often curiously intangible in everyday life. In concentrating on processes of interfacing with these crises – on the sites at which they are made ‚sensible‘ as conjunctures between possible actions and capable actors –, we want to develop innovative solutions for understanding and addressing such challenges for the future of Europe. We address interfaces as those sites at which we perceive and co-produce crises on different levels of the social. Interfaces establish a horizon of possible actions and structure the roles of a variety of social actors. We want to ask: At which interfaces do we interact with the various crises? How are they represented, materialized, and visualized? What objects, collectives, events, media, or symbols are the most prevalent interfaces in a specific crisis? What level(s) of the social emerge as particularly important sites of interfacing? Building on theories from media and cultural studies as well as sociology and cognitive science we want to establish a comparative framework in which interfacing processes with past, current, and future crises can be analyzed and possible solutions can be identified. The subprojects propose to utilize a variety of methodological approaches: discourse and dispositive analysis, ethnographic approaches, media archeology, topic modeling, expert interviews, document analysis, citation network analysis, and lab- and field-based cognitive experimentation combined with theoretical cognitive semiotic analysis. We are convinced that in order to strengthen the viability of the European project, researchers, experts, policy makers, and the public will have to give attention to the viability of current sites of interaction and the development of future crisis interfaces. Our project wants to create new possibilities of thinking about providing functional interfaces to materialize and represent crises on the social levels of direct interaction, movements, organizations, digital platforms, and society.

Digitality and digitalisation of research and teaching in the context of social and cultural studies

In the thematic area of digitality and digitalisation, to which Dr. Stefan Priester, among others, is contributing with a project on “platform sociology” (cf. Priester 2021), the focus of interest in teaching and research is, on the one hand, on forms of analog and digital collaboration in the humanities and, on the other hand, on an engagement with the phenomenon of “Silicon Valley” in religion cultural, and media studies.

• RE/THINK/WORK MEDIA(3) - Digital and Analog Experiments in Collaboration in Comparative Religion Studies (project proposal, submitted to the Momentum program of the VW Foundation 2020, rejected, alternative implementation currently in development)
  Collaboration in research and teaching in the humanities consists primarily of creating sustained moments of intellectual intensity in the interaction between participants. By exploring the media constellations and the intellectual potential of existing and future collaborative online cultures, RE/THINK/WORK MEDIA(3) aims to reflect on digital and analogue tools of collaborative intensity, experiment with them and present best practices as a result. To this end, a Collaborative Humanities Research and Teaching Lab will be established. In this lab we will experiment with analog and digital media of collaboration, conduct research on the media of religion, and communicate the results using innovative media of scholarship. The experimental and practical exploration of future forms of collaboration in the humanities will take place a) through an iterative further development of the form of the scholarly retreat (‘being together as a scholarly practice’, A. Stiegler); and b) through an experimental engagement with collaborative online cultures, in which we adapt their digital tools, aesthetic strategies and forms of knowledge production to rethink and rework forms of producing intellectual intensity in humanities research and research-based teaching.

In teaching, this topic has so far been addressed in seminars on “Theorizing Silicon Valley: Media, Computers, and Communication in the 20th and 21st Century” (with S. Priester) and “The Rise of Silicon Valley: Media, Computers, and Counterculture in the 20th and 21st Century”. These seminars in the North American Studies and Media Studies programs aim to look at Silicon Valley both as a concrete place where politics, technology, and American history and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries come together and develop into a global transformative force, and to analyse “Silicon Valley” as a cipher for a certain understanding of cultural, social, and technical progress in the 21st century. Particular attention will be paid to ideological and religious influences on Silicon Valley, as well as such influences emanating from it in recent decades.

Deutungskämpfe around health and illness: Interfaces between religious, cultural, and media studies and medical research.

Another emerging research interest at the Professorship of Religion and Society is the Deutungskämpfe (“interpretive struggles”) around health and illness in light of contemporary secular and religious worldviews. In the context of digital public spheres, explicit disputes about these topics are steadily increasing on digital platforms. Here, as has become visible in the Corona pandemic, a cooperation of cultural and social sciences with the natural sciences as well as with medical research is particularly necessary.

• Wissenspolitik in the Corona Pandemic: School Closures and Child Vaccination (with Prof. Dr. David Kaldewey)
  In the Corona crisis, beneath the surface of rough political decisions (lockdown vs. relaxation; containment vs. contamination, etc.), a multitude of enormously complex “sideshows” of pandemic policy emerge, each of which ignites its own debate: e.g. compulsory masking, capacity limits of the health system, border closures, vaccination prioritisation, or rapid tests. Against this background, this project is dedicated to two particularly prominent debates from the perspectives of the sociology of science and media studies: the question of school closures and the question of child vaccinations against Corona. With both topics, during the pandemic - despite hardened fronts - it was never a question of “science” being able to provide a definite status quo of results. Rather, most of those involved entered the fray with somewhat plausible arguments based on scientific findings. In the horizon of a co-existence of multiple facts, the project therefore wants to reconstruct social debates and issue-related activism in terms of a sociology of science and the media (with a focus on the Twitter platform). In addition to data analyses, qualitative interviews with experts and activists on Twitter will be conducted. The work at the Professorship for Religion and Society focuses on the topic of child vaccinations, in particular on the organization of off-label vaccinations for children via the Twitter platform.

• Mapping the religious-ideological configuration of the alternative medicine field in the Black Forest region
  I am currently working on establishing a cooperation with Prof. Dr. Jost Steinhäuser (General Medicine, Univ. Lübeck) and Prof. Dr. Anne Koch (Religious Studies, Univ. Freiburg) as well as local doctors (MEDI-MVZ, Dr. med. Wolfgang C.G. von Meißner) to carry out some smaller and larger projects on health care research in the model region “Baiersbronn” in the Black Forest. The aim of the projects is to provide expertise from religious and cultural studies to map the religious-ideological configuration of the alternative medical field in the Black Forest region (using quantitative and qualitative social science and ethnographic methods), which can stand alongside a general medical perspective on the existing medical infrastructure. In this context, in addition to an initial cooperation within the framework of already conceived survey studies, an application to the DFG is planned. In the medium term, cooperation with colleagues from the field of health economics are envisioned.

Teaching

I teach courses in religious studies on the worldwide history of Christianity, Buddhism with a focus on Southeast Asia, and on systematic topics such as “Religion and Globalisation”, “Religion and Gender”, or “History of Religion as Media History”. In addition, I am active in teaching in the degree programs Media Studies, Sociology, and North American Studies with courses on all the topics presented in the research profile above.

In academic teaching, I work on the basis of cutting-edge didactic concepts for higher education. I greatly value a dialogue-based learning environment in which a high degree of student participation is not only possible but also necessary. At the same time, it was a concern of mine early on to integrate digital media into academic teaching in order to enable students to use new forms of collaborative work, among other things. In view of the challenges of teaching in the context of the Corona pandemic, in winter 2021 I published the volume Experimente mit digitaler Lehre: Überlegungen und Modelle jenseits einer Defizitperspektive (Hermann 2021d), in which experiences and visions for digital teaching and face-to-face teaching are formulated without setting them against each other. Some of the ideas presented there on research-oriented and multi-perspective teaching go back to a lecture series already organised in 2018 together with the Rectorate of the University of Bonn on “Die Zukunft forschender Lehre an der europäischen Universität: Impulse für eine Lehrstrategie der Universität Bonn”.

Currently, I am interested, especially in cooperation with the religious studies scholar Petra Tillessen at the Department of Religion Studies, in how the potentials of simulation games, role plays and live action online games (cf. Hermann/Tillessen 2021; Reininghaus/Hermann 2021) can be elaborated and demonstrated for university teaching.

Due to my position at a central academic institution, I have taught in very different degree programmes at the Faculty of Humanities in Bonn since 2017. Likewise, I cooperate closely with actors beyond the university, especially in the field of documentary film in projects as well as in teaching with the University of Television and Film Munich, the Bayerischer Rundfunk and especially with the documentary filmmakers Dorothea Grießbach (https://religionen-in-hamburg.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/) as well as Yulia Lokshina (cf. Hermann/Lokshina 2019).

References

Bergunder, M. 2012. „Was ist Religion? Kulturwissenschaftliche Überlegungen zum Gegenstand der Religionswissenschaft“, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 19, 3–55.

Hermann, A. i. V. a. „Keepers of Community: The Spaces of Creating and Playing TRPGs Online in the Early 2020s“, Post45 Contemporaries (Blog Post Series).

Hermann, A. i. V. b. „Cozy Mysteries at Your Table and in Your Ears: Brindlewood Bay and the Afterlife of Murder, She Wrote in Contemporary Actual Play TTRPG Podcasts“, Planed article for Analog Game Studies.

Hermann, A. Forthcoming a (im Druck), „Bad and Good Belief? On the Role of Conviction in Religion“, in: A. Finger und M. Wagner (Hrsg.): Bias, Belief, and Conviction in an Age of Fake Facts, London: Routledge (21 Seiten).

Hermann, A. Forthcoming b (eingereicht). „World Society: Upended?“, in L.H. Griffin (Hrsg.): „Crisis“ in the Study of Religion, Sheffield: Equinox (13 Seiten).

Hermann, A. Forthcoming c (eingereicht). „The Other D&D: Religion(s) in Dungeons & Dragons from Deities & Demigods to Today“, in: J. Zagal, M. Carter und P. Sidhu (Hrsg.): D&D at 50: An Edited Collection, Cambridge: MIT Press (20 Seiten).

Hermann, A. / G. Reininghaus. Forthcoming (im Druck), „Digital ,Character Keepers‘ for Analog Games: Analyzing Online Play Aids in the Contemporary Indie TRPG Community“, in: Analog Game Studies (Proceedings „Generation Analog“-Conference, 2021) (20 Seiten).

Hermann, A. 2022a, “Wendung Mohn I: Vielfältige Grundlagen der Theoriebildung und die metatheoretische Debatte in der Religionswissenschaft und Religionsforschung”, in: Klenk, M. / Lokshina, Y. / Hermann, A. (Hrsg.), Setzung – Wendung – Mitschrift: Dokumentation einer Arbeitsform, Bonn: FIW.

Hermann, A. 2022b, “Wendung Balsom I: Encountering the Real in the Documentary”, in: Klenk, M. / Lokshina, Y. / Hermann, A. (Hrsg.), Setzung – Wendung – Mitschrift: Dokumentation einer Arbeitsform, Bonn: FIW.

Hermann, A. 2021a: „European History of Religion, Global History of Religion: On the Expansion of a Gladigowian Concept for the Study of Religion“, in: C. Auffarth, A. Grieser und A. Koch (Hrsg.): Religion in Culture – Culture in Religion: Burkhard Gladigow's Contribution to Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Religion, Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 237–268.

Hermann, A. 2021b, „Native Christians Writing Back? The Periodicals of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente in the Early Twentieth-Century Philippines”, in: A.W. Jones (Hrsg.): Christian Interculture: Texts and Voices from Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds, University Park: Penn Statue University Press, 189–213.

Hermann, A. 2021c, „Documenting Exploitation in the German Meat Industry: What Does Asymmetrical Dependency Have to Do with Us?“, Dependent 2021/1 (Magazine of the Cluster of Excellency BCDSS).

Hermann, A. 2021d (Hrsg.), Experimente mit digitaler Lehre: Modelle und Überlegungen jenseits einer Defizitperspektive, Bonn: FIW, https://doi.org/10.48565/bonndoc-3.

Hermann, A. / Tillessen, P. 2021, „Spielbeispiel: Von Pop! zu Bücherfreunde! zu KreatYve!“, in: Hermann, A. (Hrsg.) Experimente mit digitaler Lehre: Modelle und Überlegungen jenseits einer Defizitperspektive, Bonn: FIW, https://doi.org/10.48565/bonndoc-3.

Hermann, A. / G. Reininghaus 2021, „Beyond the Character Sheet: ,Character Keepers‘ as Digital Play Aids in the Contemporary Indie TRPG Community“, Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies 2: 31–50. https://doi.org/10.14989/jarps_2_31.

Hermann, A. / S. Priester 2020: „,Bad Religion‘ on the University Campus: ,Political Correctness‘ and the Future of the Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion“, in: L. Dorrough Smith, S. Führding und A. Hermann (Hrsg.). Hijacked: A Critical Treatment of the Public Rhetoric of Good and Bad Religion, Sheffield: Equinox, 129–149.

Hermann, A. 2019a, „Spatial Media of Secularity: Buddhist Cosmo-Geographic Space in the 19th Century”, in: Companion to the Study of Secularity, hrsg. von HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, Universität Leipzig.

Hermann, A. 2019b, „Religion und Film: Aktuelle religionsästhetische Forschungsperspektiven“, Verkündigung und Forschung 64/2, 117–133.

Hermann, A. / Y. Lokshina 2019, „Cinaesthetics”, in: A. Koch und K. Wilkens (Hrsg.): The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion, London: Bloomsbury, 193–203.

Hermann, A. 2018a, „Distinguishing ,Religion‘. Variants of Differentiation and the Emergence of ,Religion‘ as a Global Category in Modern Asia“, Soziale Systeme 23/1–2 [published June 2021], 215–234.

Hermann, A. 2018b, „A Call for a Permissible Plurality Within Theory-Building in a Time of Excess“, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 30/4, 487–497.

Hermann, A. 2017, „Screening the Father of Lights: Documentary Film and the Aesthetics of the Nonfictional in Contemporary Religion“, in: A. Grieser und J. Johnston (Hrsg.): Aesthetics of Religion: A Connective Concept, Berlin: de Gruyter, 103–120.

Hermann, A. 2016a, „Distinctions of Religion. The Search for Equivalents of ‚Religion‘ and the Challenge of Theorizing a ‚Global Discourse of Religion‘“, in: F. Wijsen und K. von Stuckrad (Hrsg.): Making Religion. Theory and Practice in the Discursive Study of Religion, Leiden: Brill, 97–124.

Hermann, A. 2016b, „Studying Religion, Audiovisual Media, and the Production of the ,Religious Real‘: Introducing a Review Symposium on Birgit Meyer’s Sensational Movies (2015)“, Religion 46/4, 611–629.

Hermann, A. 2016c, „Publicizing Independence. Thoughts on the Filipino ilustrado Isabelo de los Reyes, the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, and the Emergence of an Indigenous-Christian Public Sphere“, in: Journal of World Christianity 6/1, 99–122.

Hermann, A. 2015a, „,True facts of the world‘: Media of Scientific Space and the Transformations of Cosmo-Geography in Nineteenth-Century Buddhist-Christian Encounters“, in: I. Keul (Hrsg.): Asian Religions, Technology and Science, Routledge: London, 11–30.

Hermann, A. 2015b, Unterscheidungen der Religion. Analysen zum globalen Religionsdiskurs und zum Problem der Differenzierung von ,Religion‘ in buddhistischen Kontexten des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Hermann, A. 2015c, „Imagining Mount Meru. Mediale Bedingungen religiöser und wissenschaftlicher Imaginationsräume und der Wandel kosmo-geographischer Raumvorstellungen im buddhistischen Modernismus des 19. Jahrhunderts“, in: A. Wilke und L. Traut (Hrsg.): Religion – Imagination – Ästhetik: Vorstellungs- und Sinneswelten in Religion und Kultur, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 235–269.

Hermann, A. 2013, „Differenzierungsnarrative. Narrationsbezogene Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von ,Religion‘ und ,Wissenschaft‘ in modernen buddhistischen Kontexten“, in: G. Brahier / D. Johannsen (Hrsg.): Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung, Würzburg: Ergon, 295–318.

Hermann, A. 2011, „Buddhist Modernism in 19th century Siam and the Discourse of Scientific Buddhism. Towards a Global History of ,Religion‘“, in: Journal of the South and Southeast Asian Association for the Study of Culture and Religion 5, 37–57.

Jiang, W. 2022 (im Druck). „True Catholicism“ in Colonial South Asia: The Independent Catholics in Ceylon and India in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Kollmar-Paulenz, K. 2007. Zur Ausdifferenzierung eines autonomen Bereichs Religion in asiatischen Gesellschaften des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Das Beispiel der Mongolen. Bern: Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften.

Kollmar-Paulenz, K. 2013. „Lamas und Schamanen: Mongolische Wissensordnungen vom frühen 17. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert; Ein Beitrag zur Debatte um aussereuropäische Religionsbegriffe“, in: Schalk, P. (hrsg.): Religion in Asien? Studien zur Anwendbarkeit des Religionsbegriffs. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 151–200.

Koschorke, K. / Hermann, A. 2018, „,Beyond their own dwellings‘: Die Entstehung einer transregionalen und transkontinentalen indigen-christlichen Öffentlichkeit”, in: K. Koschorke, A. Hermann et al. (Hrsg.): „To give publicity to our thoughts“: Journale asiatischer und afrikanischer Christen um 1900 und die Entstehung einer transregionalen indigen-christlichen Öffentlichkeit, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 227–260.

Maltese, G. / Strube, J. 2021. „Global Religious History“, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 33/3–4, 229-257.

Marchart, O. (2018): Cultural Studies. 2. Auflage. München: UKV.

Mohn, J. (2016): „Modellbildung in der Religionswissenschaft: Die prozessuale Interdependenz der Ebenen von Religion aus der Sicht der Religionsaisthetik und Religionssemiotik“. In: Kars-ten Lehmann und Ansgar Jödicke (Hrsg.): Einheit und Differenz in der Religionswissenschaft: Stand-ortbestimmungen mit Hilfe eines Mehr-Ebenen-Modells von Religion (Würzburg: Ergon), 135–156.

Priester, S. 2021. „Plattformsoziologie“, FIW Working Paper 15.

Reininghaus, G. / Hermann, A. 2021, „Live Action Online Games (LAOGs) als Impulsgeber für die digitale Lehre“, in: Hermann, A. (Hrsg.) Experimente mit digitaler Lehre: Modelle und Überlegungen jenseits einer Defizitperspektive, Bonn: FIW, https://doi.org/10.48565/bonndoc-3.

Streicher, R. / Hermann, A. 2019, „,Religion‘ in Thailand in the 19th Century“, in: Companion to the Study of Secularity, hrsg. von HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, Universität Leipzig.

Winnebeck, J. / Sutter, O. / Hermann, A. / Antweiler, C. / Conermann, S. (2021): „On Asymetrical Dependency“. Concept Paper 1, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies.