Friday, September 5, 2008
by: Ines Angeli Murzaku, Ph.D.

Ines Angeli Murzaku, Ph.D., associate professor of Religious Studies at Seton Hall University, has won a three-year prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers for the period 2009-2011.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation maintains a network of some 23,000 Humboldtians, including 40 Nobel Prize winners, from all disciplines in 130 countries worldwide. The Humboldt Research Fellowships for Experienced Researchers are the instrument with which the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation enables highly-qualified scientists and scholars from abroad to spend extended periods of time researching in Germany.

The fellowship grant will fund Dr. Murzaku's research on the relations between Eastern and Western Churches, as well as Spiritual Ecumenism, focusing on monastic inter-religious dialogue. Dr. Murzaku will collaborate closely with Prof. Dr. Thomas Bremer, a distinguished scholar of Eastern Christianity, author of several scholarly publications, and holder of the only chair in Eastern Churches Studies in Germany, at the Ökumenisches Institut (Ecumenical Institute). The institute, part of the University of Münster School of Theology, is a unique research institute in Germany dedicated to ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue. The School of Theology at the University of Münster is the largest in German speaking countries and is one of the largest in Europe. Among world renowned Catholic theologians who have taught there are Karl Rahner, Johann Baptist Metz, Walter Kasper, and in the 1960's, Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI.

For more information please contact:
Ines Angeli Murzaku, Ph.D.
(973) 275-5845
murzakui@shu.edu