01/07/2026 09:00 - 11:10

HALL: Pola - School of Journalism

Contact: Giordan G.

Chair: Giordan G.

Urban societies worldwide are being reshaped by cultural and religious pluralization driven by migration and broader social change, prompting municipal governments, faith communities, and other stakeholders to play an increasingly active role in governing religious diversity. This urban governance involves a wide range of policy interventions and regulatory mechanisms. However, the relationship between interreligious dialogue and freedom of and from religion remains underexplored, particularly where dialogue functions not only as an object of governance or a mode of interreligious communication, but as a social practice that contributes to the establishment of norms for more equal and inclusive urban public spaces.
This panel brings together five contributions that discuss how the governance of religious diversity is grounded in various Italian cities, and how freedom of/from religion is socially constructed in urban societies. Marco Bontempi analyzes sacred art museums as dialogical spaces where religious identities are enacted through performative interaction. Olga Breskaya and Giuseppe Giordan explore the meanings of religious freedom as an outcome of the interaction among multiple social actors who continuously define and reshape it through interreligious dialogue. Maddalena Colombo and Giulia Mezzetti examine the management of interreligious dialogue in Brescia, emphasizing tensions between participation and neutrality in a highly diverse urban setting. Matteo Di Placido and Stefania Palmisano conceptualize the interreligious field as a semi-autonomous space structured by institutional logics, ideological projects, and struggles over resources. Marco Guglielmi and Stefano Sbalchiero show how religious freedom and interreligious dialogue are framed in the Italian press, highlighting the role of media narratives in shaping public understandings of religious freedom and interreligious dialogue.