Archive - Programme Eating and Drinking with the Gods 2026

Programme

9:30 | Welcome

9:45-10:30 | Keynote | Chair: Saskia Peels-Matthey

Tanya Luhrmann - How We Might Compare

Coffee

10:50-12:00 | Divine Presence | Chair: Rita Langer

Jonas Wellendorf - Divine Host, Divine Guest : Feasting and Divine Presence in Pre-Christian Scandinavia

Suneet Kumar - Hosting the Divine : Exploring Hospitality in the Nandi Festival among the Jodia of Highland Odisha, India

Break

12:10-12:45

Felix Budelmann and Saskia Peels-Matthey - Imagining Divine Presence at Ancient Greek Theoxeny Rituals

Lunch

14:30-15:40 | Interacting with Ancestors | Chair: Vincent Goossaert

Morgan E. Moroney - ‘He is Drunk with Wine!’: Divine Drink in the Tomb of Intef (TT 155)

Roomet Jakapi, Margaret Lyngdoh and Abhirup Sarkar - Commensality with the Ancestors: Indigenous Perspectives from Northeast India

Coffee

16:10-16:45 | Tradition and Innovation in Rituals of Commensality | Chair: Vincent Goossaert

Eglė Aleknaitė-Škarubskė - No More Meat: Offering Hospitality to Gods in a Fire Rite of Romuva

9:45-10:30 | Keynote | Chair: Felix Budelmann

Vincent Goossaert - Talking and Drinking with the Gods in Chinese spirit-Writing Cults, 1600-Present

Coffee

11:00-12:15 |Theological and Philosophical Reflections | Chair: Felix Budelmann

Hakan Özlen - The Lethal Table: Divine Presence as Bodily Risk in 1 Corinthians 10–11

Enrico Piergiacomi - At the Table of the Platonic God: Marsilio Ficino and the Food Metaphor in the Phaedrus

Lunch

13:45-15:40 | Narratives of Hosting God(s) | Chair: Tanya Luhrmann

Karen Sonik - Breaking Bread with the Gods—and Their Monsters—in Mesopotamia

André Lardinois - Feasting with the Gods on Lesbos

Break

Ruben Kiperwasser - Jewish Stories of Offering Meals to God

Coffee

16:00-16:45 | Keynote | Chair: Saskia Peels-Matthey

Rita Langer - When Not to Share: Dangerous Food in Sri Lankan Buddhism

Break

17:00-17:45 | Round Table with Students