Daniel Weidner

Daniel Weidner is a Professor of Comparative Literature at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg since 2020. He serves as a spokesperson for the interdisciplinary research focus Aufklärung – Religion – Wissen (ARW) since December 2022, leading collaborations between the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of the European Enlightenment (IZEA) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Pietism Research (IZP).

• Co-organizer of the annual Forum Literature and Religion events (2023–2024)
• Lead director of the Enlightenment – Religion – Knowledge research network
• Principal investigator for the DFG-funded project Genealogy of Philology

His research explores the intersection of literature and religious confession, particularly in German-Jewish literary contexts and Enlightenment-era discourses. He has organized workshops on topics like translocal Sephardic knowledge production, political theology in literature, and the role of confessions in cultural classification systems.

ARW projects under his leadership emphasize:

• Reconstructing translocal Jewish intellectual networks across Mediterranean regions
• Examining Enlightenment’s legacy in contemporary debates on secularization and religion
• Developing participatory formats for imagining future places through cultural narratives