Teaching Fellow

  nicole.bauer@univie.ac.at

Nicole M. Bauer teaches and researches at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Vienna, at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Heidelberg, and at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Innsbruck. For her Habilitation she is currently researching Catholic exorcism in contemporary society and its (re)staging and institutionalisation in Austria. Dr Bauer studied Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, and Philosophy at the University of Graz (2005; magistra philosophiae) and completed her doctorate at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Heidelberg (2015; doctor philosophiae) with a thesis on Kabbalah and religious identity, for which she received a scholarship from the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk. In addition, she qualified in psychotherapy at the University of Graz (2018) with a subsequent specialisation in systemic family therapy with the Austrian Association for Systemic Therapy and Systemic Studies (ÖAS) in Salzburg (2022). She conducted study and research semesters at the College of Jewish Studies in Heidelberg (2008–2009), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2012), and the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome (2018). Her research focuses on religion and medicine, Catholicism in contemporary society, the transformation of Jewish and Christian identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Kabbalah in the past and present, global transformations of exorcism and possession, the economics of religion, religion and gender, ethics and interreligious education, and the use of social-scientific methods in research on religion. While at the Department in the spring/summer semester 2022, she co-ordinates a course on "Exorcism Practices in Contemporary Religious Culture."