The 8th ICLARS Biennial Conference will be held, from Tuesday 1 to Thursday 3 September 2026, at University of Palermo, Italy, which will be the co-organizer of the conference.
The general theme of the conference is “State Neutrality and Cooperation with Religion: Protecting Freedom of Religion or Belief without Discrimination”.
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“State Neutrality and Cooperation with Religion: Protecting Freedom of Religion or Belief without Discrimination”
The official languages of the conference are English and Italian. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided during the plenary sessions.
The notion of the State’s religious neutrality, in its different forms, has been discussed for a long time. In the international community and institutions, there is a consensus that the various national systems of relations between of State and religion must in principle be respected, as they respond to specific historic, social, cultural and political circumstances.
Read moreThe International Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ICLARS) is an international academic association founded in 2009, bringing together scholars of law and religion from around the world. ICLARS promotes comparative and interdisciplinary research on the relationship between law and religion, with particular attention to the protection of freedom of religion and the principle of state secularism.
The ICLARS Biennial Conference is the association’s main academic event, held every two years at a different university worldwide. Following Córdoba (Spain) and Notre Dame (USA), the 2026 conference will be hosted for the first time in Italy, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Palermo, from September 1 to 3, 2026.
