The Department for Religion Studies has been created in February 2017 as a third research unit of the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft. With this new department the comparative horizon of the FIW – politics and science – now also includes comparative research on religion(s). It focuses on at least two dimensions: a comparison of religion with other function systems of world society, like science, politics, or the economy, and a comparative study of contemporary religion and the religious history of the globalized world.