Chris will be busy on his sabbatical this coming school year (23-24) as he has only recently joined two recently funded grant teams. The Shared Churches in Early Modern Europe was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Cosmic Explorer Observatory was just funded by the National Science Foundation. 

Cosmic Explorer is a next-generation observatory concept that will greatly deepen and clarify humanity’s gravitational-wave view of the cosmos. It is the planned U.S. contribution to the global next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory network. The design concept for Cosmic Explorer features two facilities, one 40 km on a side and one 20 km on a side, each housing a single L-shaped detector.

The Shared Churches were between two or more Christian religions – Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed. The oldest were established in the mid-1500s; eventually, their number grew to nearly 1,000; some 120 still exist today. Together, the shared churches of Europe open a window on the lives of ordinary people in pre-modern times, their beliefs and religious identities, and how they experienced diversity and toleration in everyday life – its rituals and celebrations, but also its conflicts and politicking.  As such, the “Shared Churches of Europe” offers a prehistory of religious pluralism and coexistence, the conditions that made them possible, and the everyday practices that sustained them for generations, even centuries.