The research project examines participation, engagement, and empowerment as key concepts in pastoral theology. The project focuses on the question of how people can be enabled to participate, thereby developing engagement, and how this can be promoted, particularly in precarious pastoral contexts such as migration or youth work.
Within this framework, I was able to complete a research stay in Latin America (in Buenos Aires and Córdoba in Argentina and in Santiago de Chile) from February 13 to March 17, 2023. The stay was funded by the Bayfor Program, supplemented by a Profor grant.
In the run-up to the trip, I was able to lay the groundwork, i.e., research sources and terminology, and prepare the empirical survey. In addition, I worked with the cooperation partners to plan joint expert discussions and conferences.
The partners were representatives of several Catholic universities in Latin America (Argentina and Chile): from the Pontificia Universita Catolica Argentina (UCA) in Buenos Aires and from the Jesuit Universidad Catolica de Córdoba (UCC) as well as the Centro de Estudios Filosóficos y Teológicos (CEFYT) of the Claretians in Córdoba and the Salesian Universidad Silva Henriquez in Santiago de Chile. Networking with existing research groups there was expanded. It was possible to conduct six interviews with young women in precarious life situations and volunteers, as well as field studies during visits to pastoral locations (such as a grassroots community in Córdoba and the San Isidro hospice).
In addition, there was an opportunity to present an agreement on behalf of the KU to representatives of the International Office of the UCC Córdoba, thus symbolically strengthening international networking.
The research semester has already yielded rich and varied results. A short article on the research stay was published in April on feinschwarz (https://www.feinschwarz.net/neues-aus-dertheologie-am-anderen-ende-der-welt-forschungsaufenthalt/). Further publications, for example in Spanish in the Revista Teológica Stromata, are in progress. In addition, there were two lectures at the University of Regensburg at the workshop “The Gendered Power System in the Catholic Church and its Impact on Women in Religious Communities” as part of the DFG research network “Vulnerabilities” and a presentation in June at the ZRKG conference “Global Christianities” in Eichstätt.
Joint editorship and possible follow-up projects are being considered with Carolina Bacher Martinez, one of the cooperation partners. At the end of April, psychologist and theologian Gabriela die Renzo and theologian Marcela Perez paid a short return visit to Eichstätt, which included a lecture in Spanish in cooperation with ZILAS at ZRKG.
The project is to be continued and expanded.

In recent years, the social, political, and scientific debate about young people has been conducted primarily from the perspective of family and psychological stress, as well as academic challenges and deficits resulting, for example, from homeschooling. The focus has therefore been primarily on formal and informal education, and thus on schools and families. However, the area of non-formal education, such as the educational mandate of youth education centers, has been neglected.

The various lockdown phases meant a high level of uncertainty for youth education centers in general, as it was impossible to plan events for the future. As a result, the limited contact with young people meant that it was not possible to support their development as usual. It was not until spring 2022 that non-formal educational events resumed in youth education centers, so that after about two years of “standstill,” work was resumed and young people were welcomed back, although they had taken important steps in their development during this “period of absence.” The major digitalization push in young people's lives contributed to a shift in the cultivation of relationships such as friendships into the virtual space, and the restrictions of this period led to increased psychological stress. These are just a few examples of influences that have changed the lives of young people and to which a youth education center must respond—also and especially in view of its religious mission.

The research project “Digital and relational: Transformation of church youth education in the context of youth education centers,” which is being carried out in cooperation with the KU Eichstätt at the Chair of Pastoral Theology, looks at these challenges.

The two-year exploratory qualitative study surveys specialists and managers at youth education centers, focusing on the mission of church youth education centers and their perception of changes compared to the pre-COVID period, as well as youth groups, focusing on their living environment and specific needs.

The project collects and analyzes data on the mentoring program of the Hildegardis Association to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions in the Catholic Church in cooperation with the Central Institute for Marriage and Family in Society (ZFG): Church in Mentoring.