European Academy of Religion Annual Conference 2019

This panel is organized by the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion

Overpopulation is one of the most serious issues impacting both the present day and the future. It is closely connected to ecological perspectives on human life on Earth. However, the “reproductive mission” of humankind has constituted a biological and moral imperative in all cultures and especially in the Abrahamic monotheisms and their laws. Combining these two divergent ‘lines of force’ inevitably also produces different ways of interpreting and living human rights. The panel is designed to explore the future interplay among religious laws, human rights and the challenges of overpopulation.

Chair:
• Peter Petkoff (Regent’s Park College, Oxford / Brunel University London)
• Mario Ricca (Università di Parma)

Panelists:
• Giancarlo Anello (Università di Parma) - Overpopulation and Sacred Law: The Wisdom of Islam and the Demographic Politics of Islamic Republic of Iran 
• Kristina Arriaga (Oxford Society for Law and Religion / US Commission for International Religious Freedom) - Overpopulation and Challenges to Religious Rights: Perspectives from the US Commission of International Religious Freedom
• Cole Durham (Brigham Young University) - Minority Religions and Building of Human Rights-Driven Civic Cultures in Contested Civic Spaces 
• Fabrizio Lobasso (Italian Ambassador to Sudan) - IDP’s, Refugees and the Sudanese Way: Comparing Alternative Dignities and Demographies 
• Peter Petkoff (Regent’s Park College, Oxford / Brunel University London) - New Worlds and New Churches: Religious Diasporas, Normative Imaginations and the Reclaiming of the Human Person from the Babylonian Captivity of Religious Demographics 
• Mario Ricca (Università di Parma) - … and a Time to Die: Religions, Human Rights and a Post-Promethean Ecology of Life 
• Melisa Vazquez (Università di Roma-Sapienza) - Biology and Education: The Unnatural “Conception” of Human Multitudes with Rights
• Robin Fretwell Wilson (University of Illinois) - Regulating Fertility and Family Formation: Rights, Religious Influences, and the Role of the State