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IRLA Think Tank to Explore Secular Challenge to Freedom


The University of Sydney will be the venue of this year's IRLA Meeting of Experts, which brings together leading religious freedom scholars. 

International think tank will meet at University of Sydney

Could secularism be a force that’s weakening religious freedom safeguards around the globe? This is the question that some of the world’s foremost academics and practitioners in the field of religious freedom will tackle when they meet in Sydney, Australia, for the IRLA’s 13th Meeting of Experts.

The five-day gathering, which begins August 21, will be held at the University of Sydney, School of Law, one of Australia’s premier tertiary institutions, and  will bring together a select group of scholars and legal experts from the United States, Europe, and the South Pacific.

Dr. John Graz, IRLA Secretary General, says these gatherings provide an extremely effective forum to explore current legal and sociological issues in the field of religious freedom.

“Over the years, IRLA Meetings of Experts have built up a significant body of academic and practical resources,” he says. “This years’ gathering promises to be both stimulating and productive, and will explore a topic of growing concern to the international religious freedom community.”

Presenters will include Carolyn Evans, Dean of the Melbourne Law School; Rosa Maria Martinez de Codes, scholar and former Spanish Justice Department official; David Little, retired professor, Harvard Divinity School; Paul Taylor, author and professor; Nicholas Miller, director of the US-based International Religious Liberty Institute; and Blandine Chelini-Pont, Professor of History, Law and Religion, at the Université Paul Cézanne.