Kerstin Radde-Antweiler is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her research focuses on mediatized religion, mediatization theory, Pagan and Christian traditions, ritual studies (Ritual Transfer, Ritual Design) and actor centered religious historiography. She conducted her doctoral research as a fellow of the Collaborative Research Center “Ritual Dynamics” at the University of Heidelberg. She is co-chair of the Video Gaming and Religion Seminar (American Academy of Religion), chairperson of the Research Group “Religion and Modern Mass Media” in the German Association for the Study of Religions, head of the LAB “Religion and Media“ at the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, Germany, member of the Research Group “Communicative Figurations“, in the steering committee of the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen, Germany, member of the Advisory Boards Center for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture. She edited special issues on the interrelation of culture and digital media and published several articles, f.e. in Online – Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, Journal of Ritual Studies, Ritual Matters
(Routledge 2009) and Digital Religion (Routledge 2013). Together with Xenia Zeiler she is co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of gamevironments. games, religion, and stuff (http://www.gamevironments.org/), the first academic journal with a specific focus on video gaming and religion. She is member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture (http://jrmdc.com/). Next to numerous paper presentation (f.e. Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft, Berlin/Germany, University of Singapore/Singapore, University of Boulder/USA, Sorbonne Paris/France, University of Lucerne/Swiss, University of Hyderabad/India), she organized summer schools and workshops, f.e. 2011 “Religious Methodology between 0 and 1: Methodological and Theoretical Approaches and Considerations in Internet Research” or 2010 “How Virtual is Reality?“.
PROJECT
Today we can observe the return of strong national identity awareness, which are also expressed in popular culture, and media narratives are not only powerful vehicles for conveying the covert or overt meanings of national identity, but also, media use shapes and reshapes identity building processes. Currently, we find new games with cultural narratives and even with clear political messages produced in Asia, a development which is intertwined with national identity building. A prominent example is the game ‘Duterte Fighting Crime 2’, a mobile app that allows users to play president Duterte and kill drug addicts, and other criminals. Based on fieldwork on the Philippines and expert interviews the project discusses how game developers implement and utilize cultural heritage in Filipino video games. It will look how constructions and interpretations of national identity in video games through cultural heritage is done in Popular Culture. How are representations of the nation and its respective culture constructed, to create a narrative of a national identity?