GEMS @ EuARe 2026. 2 July 2026

Event Name: Ninth Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion — Religion and (In)equalities

Date: 2 July 2026

Location: Rome, Italy

Organisers: European Academy of Religion / LUISS Guido Carli

Dr. Neven Vukić represented the Horizon Europe GEMS Project at the Ninth Annual Conference of the European Academy of Religion, held in Rome from 30 June to 3 July 2026.

As part of the panel “Digital Religion in an (In)equal World: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions,” Dr. Vukić delivered a paper titled “Procedural Worlds and Religious Imagination: Gaming, Identity, and the Conditions of Belief in Contemporary Society.”

The paper explored gaming as a significant contemporary environment for identity formation, symbolic imagination and meaning-making. It examined how procedural worlds, rule-based systems and immersive digital environments can shape the conditions through which belief, belonging and moral orientation are encountered and negotiated in contemporary society.