Antonella Rati - "Rethinking the relationship between religion and secular law. Religious identities in public spaces from a comparative perspective"

During the last ten years, a number of European countries have faced an increase in claims for the recognition and implementation of religious traditions and communities of faith in the process of governance. These claims undermine classical theories of secularization, which predicted their relegation to the private sphere. It is demonstrated that this new "de-privatization“ of religion does not question the separation between the 'spiritual‘ and the 'political‘, but reflects the ambition of religious traditions to participate in the complex process of redefining the normative basis of "post-secular“ societies. Within this context, the extent and implications of the involvement of religious groups in the normative process are discussed and solutions to guarantee competing world views equal access to the public arena are explored.

Antonella Ratti was born in Rome in 1980 and studied Political Science at the University of Rome I “La Sapienza” until 2004, at which time she left for the University Teramo, where she finished her studies in law in 2008, with a doctoral thesis on “The protection of the rights of religious minorities in Europe”. Since, Ms. Ratti has been working as a lecture at the social science Luiss Guide Carli University in Rome. Since October 2011, Ms. Ratti is Junior Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities "Law as Culture".