Career

For newsletters about what our alumni are doing, see:
https://www.religionstudycareers.com/news 

RRE will give you:

  • – International experience.
  • – Advanced knowledge about the religious traditions at the root of European culture in their formative periods.
  • – A deeper understanding of the formative processes of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the parallels and differences between the three traditions, and the interaction of their followers.
  • – The ability to apply and to use relevant scholarly methods and to understand and to describe these theoretically.
  • – Skills to communicate your knowledge of the subject matter, and your theoretical insights and to transmit the acquired methods to others, both orally and in writing.
  • – The tools to evaluate critically the role of the three religions in contemporary society.

Career prospects

As a graduate from this programme you will qualify for innovative scholarly work and for further education, e.g. in PhD-programmes, as well as for teaching on religion and intercultural relations. You will also be able to enter into specialised occupations in government institutions or organisations dealing with culture, integration, diplomacy etc. and in private firms for example with business relations with the Middle East.

Your effort and your career

Expertise on religions, their interaction and their role in society and culture is increasingly recognised as important to society. The task of opening the door from the general recognition of this to a specific career in private companies, organisations and public administration is best fulfilled through your ingenuity, openness and creativity.

The Nordic Network for the Study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the First Millennium

The Nordic Network for the Study of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the First Millennium (NNJCI) is a network of faculty and PhD-students from Nordic academic institutions that coordinates annual, interdisciplinary excursions, with an integral seminar part, for Nordic PhD-students in disciplines within the wider field of the first millennium history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in their various contexts in the Mediterranean area in its widest sense. The RRE programme is affiliated with this network.

But what do RRE graduates actually do?

The answer is: Very many different jobs. There is a large number who have gone on to doing PhD work, ca. 20% of our alumni so far. Here is a glimpse into the careers of Helsinki University graduates. And below is a long interview with one of the programme’s graduates, currently doing some very interesting research and field work among Muslims.

Here are some areas where RRE graduates work:
Public administration, university administration, mission organisation, other NGOs, social and integration work, ministry, diplomacy, recruitment agency, non-skilled labour, partner in HR, private company.

Some numbers:
By January 2022, 141 had students graduated. And here is the list of places where 32 RRE-graduates have been or are doing PhD-studies:

MIT
Lund University
University of Ghana
Aarhus University
Odense University
University of Heidelberg
Norwegian School of Theology, Oslo
Faculty of Theology, Oslo
University of Helsinki
Texas A&M University
University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
Martin Luther Universität, Halle, Wittenberg
Humboldt Universität, Berlin
University of Sheffield
University of Edinburgh
Yale University
Oxford University
International Islamic University of Malaysia
Saint Petersburg University
Lvov University
University of Michigan
Bergen University
University of Exeter
Gumilyov Eurasian National University

In addition, five RRE graduates teach at university level: University of Florida, Seton Hall in New Jersey, Norwegian University of Science and Theology, Trondheim, and the University of Southern Denmark.