Religion and cultural landscapes
The geographic dimension of religion is mostly empirically studied at the Department of Human Geography and Transformation Research. Foremost among these are questions on the regional economic effects of places of pilgrimage and pilgrimage routes, on the transformation of religious spheres of action or on the typification of religious beliefs in a post-secular society. Often, the cultural landscape also plays an important role. Thus, for example, brand building processes (place branding) of sacred cultural landscapes, the vulnerability and resilience of sacral cultural landscape elements or the touristic valorisation and commodification of sacred cultural landscapes are discussed. But outside of the geography of religion cultural landscape research at the department also deals with the inventorying and mapping of cultural landscape elements or the transformation of cultural landscapes.