Innovation Talks. Marco Ventura

Dec 19 2017 - ore 18:00 - Bologna Business School - Via degli Scalini 18 - Bologna

The last Innovation Talk of the autumn cycle will host Marco Ventura, Director of the Centre for Religious Studies at Bruno Kessler Foundation and Professor of Law and Religion at the University of Siena.  In his speech Innovative religion: the challenge for business, Ventura will illustrate the latest and possible future interactions between religion and business. The event is organized in collaboration with Philip Morris Italia.

 

Central to the debate is the emergence of “innovative religion”, which Ventura defines as religious individuals and communities engaging with various forms of innovation. Such “innovative religion” is the result of new demands arising from the contemporary global society, pushing religious actors and the business sector to reshape their interaction.

 

The first part of the speech will focus on the increasing sense amongst religious actors that they have a distinctive duty to contribute to social welfare, economic growth and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Secondly, will be discussed the fact that this effort of religious individuals and communities to have an impact is conducive to “innovative religion”, as confirmed by several examples: the Molengeek coding school on a community-building use of information technology; the Georgetown and FBK project on faith-based global health systems; the NASA funded research project on astrobiology at the Center of Theological Inquiry of Princeton.

 

In the third part of the lecture Professor Ventura will illustrate the resulting challenge for the business sector, in terms of:

  • rethinking the ethos/faith/belief central to the brand/identity/ownership of companies;
  • making a multi-religious working environment an asset for the companies;
  • contributing managerial skills and business strategies to faith communities;
  • partnering with religious communities, locally and globally, in order to shape and guide sound SDGs oriented public policies.

 

Marco Ventura is a professor with tenure in law and religion at the Law Department of the University of Siena (Italy). From 2016 to 2018 he is the Director of the Center for Religious Studies at Fondazione Bruno Kessler of Trento (Italy), with a mission on research about the interaction of religion and innovation. From 2016 to 2018 he is a member of the panel of experts on freedom of religion or belief of OSCE / ODIHR. He is a member of the European Consortium for Church and State Research as well as of the International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies.

 

He is an associate professor at the University of Luxembourg within the European governance programme. He is an associate researcher at the Center Droit, Religion, Entreprise et Societé of the University of Strasbourg and CNRS. In 2018 he will teach a course on ‘Politics, religion and values in the European Union’ at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

 

Marco Ventura received a PhD in law and religion at the University of Strasbourg. He has visited the universities of London (UCL), Oxford, Strasbourg, Brussels (ULB), the Centro de Formação Jurídica e Judiciária of Macau, the Indian Law Institute in Delhi, the University of Cape Town, Al Akhawayn University in Morocco and the Peking University in Beijing. From 2012 to 2015 he was a professor of canon law and law and religion at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). From 2013 to 2015 he visited Vietnam as an expert in the dialogue between the European Union and the Vietnamese Committee on Religious Affairs.

 

Professor Ventura is a member of the Editorial Board of the Ecclesiastical Law Journal (Cambridge University Press). He has published extensively on freedom of religion or belief, law and religion, comparative religious laws. His latest book is From Your Gods to Our Gods. A History of Religion in British, Indian and South African Courts (Cascade Books, 2014).

 

The event, dedicated to BBS Community, will be held in Italian and English language with simultaneous translation.

In order to participate the registration is needed.

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