Theology & Peace will not host a conference this year, but we have another opportunity to gather. If you enjoyed last year’s COLLABORATORS’ CONFERENCE, I recommend this year’s COV&R ONLINE CONFERENCE, “Desiring Machines: Robots, Mimesis, and Violence in the Age of AI,” July 7-10, hosted by Purdue University. This is a chance to see your Theology & Peace friends while also participating in an international community dedicated to the application of Mimetic Theory across a wide range of fields and disciplines. I promise, there is something for everyone! REGISTRATION IS OPEN!

Welcome to the 31st annual meeting of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Founded in 1990, COV&R is an international association of scholars and practitioners devoted to exploring, critiquing, and developing the mimetic theory of René Girard. Girard’s ideas regarding imitative desire, sacrifice, scapegoating, and violence have been elaborated in literary studies, anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, economics, film studies, political science, religious studies, Biblical studies, and, in general, all fields of the humanities and social sciences. In our conference this year, we would like to expand that body of thinking to examine aspects of the field of artificial intelligence and, in particular, robotics and self-awareness. We invite papers from all fields in which Girard’s insights have proved seminal but especially those that would explore some of the newer challenges posed by recent and ongoing technological innovations.