Rafaela Eulberg holds a doctorate in religious studies and has been a research assistant at the Department of Religious Studies at the Institute für Orient- und Asienwissenschaften (IOA) at the University of Bonn since October 2023 in the project “Praktische Wege in die Religionswissenschaft. Vielfältige Spieledidaktik, nachhaltige Begegnungen und digital-gestützte Fachorientierung in der Studieneingangsphase (Practical paths into religious studies. Diverse game didactics, sustainable encounters and digitally-supported subject orientation in the introductory phase of studies)”. Her focus is on the development of agile excursion didactics¹ in religious studies.

At the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft, she is a post-doc researcher at the Department of Religious Studies and a member of the DATIPilot innovation funding project “Zukunft erspielen: The innovation potential of tabletop role-playing games in educational work”.  

Rafaela Eulberg completed her doctorate in religious studies at the University of Lucerne in March 2018 with the dissertation New places for the Gods. Dynamics of localization of Tamil Hindu practices in Switzerland in the context of the Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu Diaspora. In June 2018, she was awarded the Fritz Stolz Prize of the Swiss Society for Religious Studies (SGR/SSSR) for her dissertation. 

She studied Comparative Religious Studies, Psychology, Old Testament and Theological Women's Studies at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. She wrote her final thesis with field research in Europe on “Wallfahrten der katholischen Sinti und Roma. Ausdruck des religiösen Lebens einer Minderheit (Pilgrimages of the Catholic Sinti and Roma. Expression of the religious life of a minority)”. 

As a research assistant at the University of Lucerne, she worked on the project “Zugewanderte Religion, öffentlicher Raum und Wandel von Geschlechterrollen tamilischer Hindus und vietnamesischer Buddhisten in der Schweiz (Immigrant religion, public space and changing gender roles of Tamil Hindus and Vietnamese Buddhists in Switzerland)”, which was part of the National Research Project 58 “Religionsgemeinschaften, Staat und Gesellschaft” (final report ²of the sub-project). In addition, she was an associate member of the interdisciplinary doctoral program “Interferenzen von Religion mit Politik und Wirtschaft im Spiegel ihrer Konstruktionsgeschichten” of the Center for Religion, Economics and Politics (ZRWP) of the Universities of Basel and Lucerne, Switzerland. 

In addition to her academic work, she is a full-time pedagogical assistant at the Bildungswerk interKultur.

Focus and interests

Rafaela Eulberg's research focuses on 'religion and migration' (with a particular focus on the dynamics of religious practice of refugees), the aesthetics of religion, intersectional religious studies and, since analyzing Catholic pilgrimages of Sinti and Roma as part of her master's thesis, the field of antiziganism: The current project “‚Die wahrsagende Zigeunerin‘ als nicht-okzidentale Andere. Magie-Diskurse und ihre intersektionale Verschränkung in antiziganistischen Formationen im deutschsprachigen Raum (‘The fortune-telling Gypsy’ as a non-occidental Other. Magic discourses and their intersectional entanglement in antigypsyist formations in German-speaking countries)” is located in the field of European religious history. It analyzes the religious discourse on the 'Zigeuner (gypsy)' construct from a gender-theoretical perspective and combines the research field of “Antiziganismus” with questions of religious studies. 

The project on the global Zen movement by Thích Nhất Hạnh with the working title “Aisthetische Resonanzräume: Retreatzentren einer transkulturellen Zen-Bewegung aus Vietnam” takes the perspective of a global history of religion with a postcolonial orientation. Of particular importance is the question of the local relationship between the 'universal' Zen Buddhist tradition and 'particular' Vietnameseness.