Ines Angeli Murzaku
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Ines Angeli Murzaku, professor of religion and director of the Catholic Studies program at Seton Hall University, has been selected by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board for a Fulbright award to Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia. This will be Murzaku’s fourth Fulbright award; she has previously completed Fulbright research twice in Italy and once in Slovenia.
Murzaku will serve as a Fulbright senior specialist in the St. Clement of Ohrid Faculty of Theology in Skopje. Since its founding in 1967, St. Clement of Ohrid Orthodox School of Theology has been dedicated to international and interdisciplinary studies. The School of Theology, which is devoted to preparing educators who are equipped to meet the needs of the Church, has about 1,250 enrolled students, of which 275 are graduate students. The faculty’s scholarship and teaching span across the fields of theological-historical studies, religious studies, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Murzaku’s project at the School of Theology will focus on ecumenism, specifically promoting unity among Orthodox and Catholic Christians, and interreligious dialogue, specifically between Christians and Muslims.
“Professor Murzaku’s Fulbright award provides a wonderful example of how our stellar faculty foster international collaboration and interdisciplinary research, facilitate the sharing of experience and expertise in the field of higher education, and contribute to the development of Catholic higher education and interreligious dialogue,” SHU Provost and Executive Vice President Katia Passerini said.
Gjoko Gjorgjevski, dean of the School of Theology at St. Clement of Ohrid, highlighted the benefits that both Ss. Cyril and Methodius University and Seton Hall University will reap from this experience.
“I am very happy to welcome professor Ines Murzaku to the St. Clement of Ohrid Faculty of Theology in Skopje,” Gjorgjevski said. “Our collaboration will be beneficial to both our institutions, and I hope this Fulbright will build more bridges of cooperation for future common-interest programs. Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue are much needed in our day and age, and this begins with an ecumenical education, knowing the commonalities of our religious traditions and building on them — and this is exactly what we will do.”
Murzaku said that North Macedonia will provide fertile ground for her research on how interreligious dialogue can promote peace. North Macedonia’s religious makeup is 64.8 percent Macedonian Orthodox, 33.3 percent Muslim, 0.4 percent other Christian, and 1.5 percent other/unspecified. The ethnic makeup of North Macedonia is 64.2 percent Macedonian, 25.2 percent Albanian, 3.9 percent Turkish, 2.7 percent Romani, 1.8 percent Serb and 2.2 percent other.
“The issue I will research is the place of religion in North Macedonia, how religion can be an agent of peace, and the impact of ecumenism and interreligious dialogue in peace-building,” Murzaku said.
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