13 June 2025, 5-7.30pm: VDTR Public Lectures and Panel Discussion

We are very pleased to welcome three internationally renowned scholars to our VDTR Public Lectures in collaboration with the “Workshop on liberating contextual theologies” organized by VDTR members. The workshop and the lectures will deal with the topic of corporeality as a challenge for contemporary theology.

Geraldina Ulloa Céspedes (Guatemala): Body-Territory and Territory-Earth in Latin America: An Approach from an Ecofeminist Perspective: One of the most significant contributions being made by women's movements in Latin America and the Caribbean has to do with the articulation between territory as land and territory as body. So much so that, for many women, to speak of territory is a question that includes both territory-land and territory-body. In this sense, ecofeminist movements are being the most active and proactive in the struggle for the defense of ancestral territories and bodily territories.

Our bodies and our territories are the spaces we inhabit and from which we are often expelled as women. It is in the body of women and in the body of the earth, where today the violence and perversity of the system is most strongly manifested, which, for the sake of profit, is capable of turning it into merchandise, even to the point of destroying it. But also, body-territory and land-territory constitute today the undeniable place where different forms of resistance are manifested and where the sacred and the presence of an anti-patriarchal God, lover of life and defender of the most vulnerable, is experienced.

Lisa Isherwood (Grossbritannien): Love your Body and Resist: As a Christian theologian everything starts with incarnation for me. However, not simply the once and for all incarnation of the Son of God but the incarnation that is the very core of all that lives. In loving our bodies we are embracing that which makes us unique and at the same time bearers of incarnational potential. In this day and age when the bodies of women come under attack in so many diverse ways loving our bodies does involve resisting personally and on a global forum.

Ángel Francisco Méndez Montoya (Mexico): Embodiment Choreopolitics: Learning Theology through Disruptive Dancing Bodies: Theology is an embodied and dynamic practice, deeply rooted in the rhythms and movements of everyday life. This keynote explores how dancing bodies disrupt and reimagine traditional theological frameworks, emphasizing the body as a sacred site where divine desire and human creativity intertwine, offering a space for resistance, transformation, and liberation.

Through the lens of embodiment choreopolitics, this keynote reflects on how corporeal practices—such as the choreopolitical protest of Las Tesis or the disruptive movements of postmodern dance—challenge oppressive systems and open new pathways for theological reflection. The fissures of corporeal life are where the sacred emerges, inviting us to encounter a God who moves with and through the bodies of those who resist, desire, and create. In this way, theology becomes a dance—a dynamic interplay of flesh, spirit, and the divine.

The lectures are open to the public and will take place at the Forum Zeit und Glaube, Otto-Mauer-Zentrum, Währinger Straße 2-4, 1090 Vienna. We look forward to your participation!

If you want to take part in the whole workshop (not only the public lectures), please register your participation here.