Mara Griesehop is a predoctoral researcher at the Department of Religious Studies. She is currently working on her SNSF-funded project “Religion at the Court of Justice of the European Union: Re-designing the religious field through single marked litigation” (2022 – 2026, in cooperation with the Study of Religion Department, University of Münster, Germany). Mara first joined the University of Zurich as an assistant at the Chair of Theory and Systematic Study of Religions in 2022. Beforehand, she completed the Joint Degree M.A. Program “Religion – Economics – Politics” at the Universities Lucerne, Zurich, and Basel with a thesis on “Religion-Policy and European Integration,” investigating the dynamics of institutional secularization.

Mara’s background is in Political Science and the Study of Religion. She received her B.A. from the University of Bremen (Germany) in 2018. In her B.A. thesis, she explored the challenges the German skilled crafts sector faces from European integration. During her Bachelor's and Master's studies, Mara held a study scholarship from the German Scholarship Foundation. She worked as a student assistant in teaching (Bremen) and research (Lucerne, SNSF project “Configurations of Individual and Collective Religious Identities”).

Research interests:

• Religion and Law
• Sociology of Religion
• European Integration
• Religion and Politics
• Law and Society

For more information on Mara’s current research project, visit the SNSF website (here).

Between August 2024 and July 2026, Mara serves as delegate of the junior researchers in the Faculty and Department Assembly. Please do not hesitate to contact her with any related questions or inquiries.