Dirk Johannsen

• Johannsen, Dirk (2026). Placelore: Enacting Storyworlds. In Valk, Ülo; Johannsen, Dirk; Bowman, Marion Irene; Būgienė, Lina & Misāne, Agita (Ed.), Placelore. Pilgrim Routes, Restoried Sites and Contested Spaces. Equinox Publishing. ISSN 9781800509061. p. 1–21. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The introduction to Placelore. Pilgrim Routes, Re-storied Sites, and Contested Spaces, this chapter discusses the concept of placelore from a narratological perspective and introduces the contributions to the volume. Multilayered sites that have been re-storied through changing worldviews, historical events, changing political regimes, and partisan claims reveal how placelore anchors storyworlds to specific locations, defining both the experience of and the engagement with a place by locating it in a wider ontological landscape. The introduction approaches placelore as an analytical concept to capture the dynamic loop between storying the world and worlding the story, showing how placemaking needs to be understood as worldmaking.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2026). Enacting the Secular: Freethinker Stories of the Nordic “Modern Breakthrough”. In Tonning, Erik & Tonning, Fionnuala O’Neill (Ed.), Inventing the Secular. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004737853. p. 214–234. doi: 10.1163/9789004737860-012. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In How God becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann argues that the reality of a faith does not come easy. In difference to "ordinary ways of seeing", it needs to be kindled. Using the case of the Nordic freethinker movement of the 1870s and 1880s, and its literary formation in the so-called Modern Breakthrough, I suggest that the secular (and its corollary, the ordinary) was historically enacted in a similar process of real-making. The storyworld promoted in freethinker stories was not simply a world without God. It was a world where the secular had to be made plausible and argued for given a society saturated with expressions of faith. I take inspiration from the active inference framework of enacted cognition, as it allows identifying religious and literary kindling practices as instantiations of more general perceptual and enactive sampling mechanisms by which culturally specific mental models of the world are self-evidenced and ‘realized.’ This active inference framework allows us to approach individual stories as attentional protocols, descriptive of events and experiences in a (story)world, but prescriptive of sensory, cognitive, and behavioural strategies that are best suited to reveal this world’s epistemic affordances and inhabit it. I show how the historical freethinker stories of the modern breakthrough are defined by dealing with societal expressions of faith in a (story)world stripped of the object of this faith, making religion a social phenomenon and, thus, teaching the audience (effortful) kindling and (effortless) sampling strategies that first facilitated the experience of a naturalistic world.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2025). Narrative cultures in the Anthropocene: World-making as active inference. In Bjærke, Marit Ruge; Brenna, Brita; Ekström, Anders & Ødemark, John (Ed.), Cultural History and the Anthropocene: Old turns, new encounters. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350532632. p. 271–287. doi: 10.5040/9781350532632.ch-016. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Understanding cultural history as the study of world-making, this chapter connects eco-narratological analysis with an active inference approach from the cognitive sciences. By integrating action and perception as a sampling of sensory data in a process of ‘self-evidencing’, the framework highlights how social and natural environments are actively inferred rather than encountered and interpreted. The approach allows us to recast narrative cultures as regimes of attention that modulate perception by defining salience and epistemic affordances of an environment, thus describing the process by which contingent human-world relations are rendered self-evident – that is, how storyworlds become inhabited. Using the case of two millennialist groups gathered in early nineteenth-century New Harmony, Indiana, the chapter explores how storyworlds, anticipating the ‘economy of nature’ to be realized in an anthropogenic future, were stripped of their premises and facilitated new forms of Anthropocene material-semiotic worlding.

• Kirsch, Anja & Johannsen, Dirk (2025). Here and There: Early 19th-Century Transatlantic Emigration and the Discourse on Social Reform. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning. ISSN 1502-7473. 24(1), p. 67–88. doi: https:/ojs.novus.no/index.php/TFK/article/view/2450/2439. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The European 19th century has been described as the century of utopias and, at the same time, as the century of transatlantic emigration. This article examines how these two histories intersected in a shared spatio-temporal frame: a post-revolutionary chronotope, which distinguished the European «here and now» from the American «there and then» in both temporal and ontological terms. Emerging from the contrasting legacies of the American and the French Revolution, this chronotope structured a migration discourse in which religious separatists and socialist reformers were envisioned as prototypes of a future social order to be realized overseas. Manifest in transnational debates on the land of promise and the land of experiments, we trace the discursive entanglement of emigration, millennialism, social reform, and early communism in the first half of the 19th century. By examining the influence of settler groups such as the Harmony Society, the New Harmony Society, and the Icarians on the social question, we follow the topos of Here and There from its religious articulations through its secular translations to the eventual disenchantment of the New World. The act of emigration lost its connotation of a reformist intervention and was increasingly cast as a self-serving reaction to economic conditions. We argue that this shift prefigured the structural logic of later migration theory in which emigrant agency was subjected to a law-like interplay of «push and pull» factors.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2024). Pietistic atheism and the modern breakthrough: on the narrative culture of secularity. Rethinking history. ISSN 1364-2529. 28(2), p. 278–303. doi: 10.1080/13642529.2024.2347182. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Secularity was first substantiated as a cultural practice constitutive of modernity in late-nineteenth-century fiction. The so-called Modern Breakthrough in Danish literature, taking place between 1871 and into the 1880s, is a prime case of a cultural radical movement that translated the modern criticism of religion into a literary and political program. Today, the Danish writer J. P. Jacobsen’s novel Niels Lyhne (1880) remains a classic of the atheistic literature of the period. Its portrayal of the psychological struggles involved in the transition from a tradition of faith to a modern secular society suggest it to be a core document of atheistic identity formation. To contemporaries, however, the psychology of the protagonist Niels Lyhne seemed fundamentally implausible, and his atheism overtly dramatic. By contextualising the literary work in its wider and highly contested narrative culture, this article discusses how narrative scripts first substantiated the modern religious vs secular distinction. In documenting the changing plausibility structures by which Jacobsen’s novel could become prescriptive of the emotional norms of a secular mind, the article explores how literary works shape cultural and emotional realities.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2023). The Entangled Imagination W.B. Yeats' “Moods” and the Psychologization of Magic. Entangled Religions: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Religious Contact and Transfer. 14(3). doi: 10.46586/er.14.2023.10389. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Among modern practitioners of magic, the “psychologization of magic” has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888–1903). Approaching the Order’s teachings through the lens of contemporaneous literary discourse, the Irish poet and magician William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) attempted to consolidate supernaturalist and naturalist understandings of magic throughout the 1890s. In 1892, he made the concept of the “immortal moods” a key to both his poetry and his magical practice. Evoked through symbols in a ritual or a poem, these moods would descend “like a faint sigh into people’s minds” and move them to action, causing “all great changes in the world.” Yeats explored this concept in theoretical writings, poetic experiments, and his ritual practice, finding his own imagination entangled with past imaginations. Serving a brief term as the Golden Dawn’s Imperator and Instructor in Mystical Philosophy in 1901, he condensed the insights gained from this work in the doctrines of the “great mind and great memory.” Presenting a study of Yeats’ psychology of the universal mind, this article shows how his amalgamation of literary and folkloristic theorizing paved the way to connect magical and poetic practice to the emerging psychological discourse.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2023). Die wilden Horden. Säkularisierungserzählungen und säkulare Identitäten bei Georg Brandes und in der frühen Freidenkerbewegung. In Gröger, Angelika; Schiedermair, Joachim & Schlichtkrull, Franziska (Ed.), Säkularisierung erzählen. Entwürfe skandinavischer Literatur um 1900. Rombach Druck- und Verlagshaus. ISSN 9783968219455. p. 67–102. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2023). Folkloristiske nøkkelord: Magi. Folkeminner, tidsskrift for Norsk Folkeminnelag. ISSN 1893-6458. 74, p. 62–64. Full text in Research Archive
• Otto, Bernd-Christian & Johannsen, Dirk (2021). Introduction: Fictional Practice. In Otto, Bernd-Christian & Johannsen, Dirk (Ed.), Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004466005. p. 1–21. doi: 10.1163/9789004466005_002. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  While the premodern history of Western learned magic is full of examples of ‘fiction-based' magical practice as well as 'practice-based' fictional works, the relationship between fiction and magic has become ever more dynamic in the modern era. Coining the notion of ‘fictional practice’, we discuss the emergence of novel, imaginative types of magic from the nineteenth century onwards when poetic work and occult practice were more and more intertwined or even fully amalgamated.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2021). The Emergence of Fictional Practice in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: W.B. Yeats’ Talismanic Poetry. In Otto, Bernd-Christian & Johannsen, Dirk (Ed.), Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004466005. p. 174–202. doi: 10.1163/9789004466005_009. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  During the late nineteenth century, creating fiction had become a business and the literary imagination had become a resource. Established in 1888 as a secret society for the practice of magic and the study of the creative imagination, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn provided a considerable infrastructure that would cater to the expectations and needs of upcoming artists. The magic performed within the order promised not only to transform the adepts, but also their art. Among the magicians of the Golden Dawn, it is especially William Butler Yeats who gave a consistent account on how magic would continue to flourish in the modern age: through its merging with fiction. Studying Yeats role in the order between 1890 and 1901, this chapter details how his development of a ‘talismanic poetry’ allowed for a fictional practice in a strict sense: ritualistic and poetic work became dependent upon each other, with their theories aligned and their effects identified to be of the same nature.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2021). The Poisoned Springs of Romanticism: On the Construction and Rise of 'Mysticism' in the Nordic ‘Modern Breakthrough’. In Wilke, Annette; Stephanus, Robert & Suckro, Robert (Ed.), Constructions of Mysticism as a Universal. Roots and Interactions Across Borders. Harrassowitz Verlag. ISSN 9783447107853. p. 117–136. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  At the end of the nineteenth century, mysticism had a tremendous revival in European literary movements. In the Nordic countries, novelists approached a “scientific mysticism” meant to uncover the roots of creativity, and they became fascinated by the idea of “ethnic mysticisms” at the heart of national characters. The chapter explores the intellectual debates and constellations between 1871 and 1905 in which “mysticism” became a fighting word that resonated with post-naturalistic and nationalistic approaches to both literature and religion. A contribution to the conceptual history of mysticism, the case of the Nordic literary debate shows that the modern understanding of the term is less indebted to romanticism than previously assumed. “Romantic mysticism” became a standard term only in the naturalistic critique of romantic literature, where it was identified as the “poison” that detached the romantic writers from objective reality. This criticism endowed the term with a tremendous psycho-political relevance and, inadvertently, made it a category used to denote explorations into the “dark side of the mind” and a deeply rooted “ethnic heritage”. When mysticism first became a subject for the emerging study of religions, it was a fashionable category with programmatic modernistic rather than romantic implications.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2021). How Blasphemy became an Anachronism. Free Thought and the Media Market in Late Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia. In Stensvold, Anne (Eds.), Blasphemies compared : Transgressive speech in a globalised world. Routledge. ISSN 9780367254223. p. 158–174. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the growing media market of late nineteenth-century Scandinavia, blasphemous utterances and blasphemy accusations were widely used to generate attention and denunciate competitors. This chapter discusses blasphemy as a media strategy in the Nordic Modern Breakthrough and details how a series of trials against radical publishers changed the public perception of blasphemy laws.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2020). Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. An Introduction. In Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (Ed.), Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004421677. p. 1–13. doi: 10.1163/9789004421677_002. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role the act of storytelling plays in the cultivation of the senses and the cultivation of the world, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from Antiquity until today, in regions ranging from Mesoamerica to Europe, East and South Asia, and Africa.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2020). How to Sense a Ghost. On the Aesthetics of Legend Traditions. In Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (Ed.), Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004421677. p. 66–90. doi: 10.1163/9789004421677_005. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this chapter, Johannsen suggests reading legend traditions as a sensory practice suited to augment reality with elements of a mythical storyworld. Legends are both descriptive and prescriptive, and the analyses of their social functions have long dominated folkloristic research. Their functional use, however, is always mediated: Narrative scripts develop their social potential in that they translate into aesthetic scripts that play a crucial role in the cultivation of the senses. Proceeding from an argument on the experientiality of legend traditions made by Lauri Honko, the contribution connects the perspective of the aesthetics of religion to the cognitive framework of predictive processing. From a predictive processing perspective, aesthetic scripts are suited to alter perceptions by micro-managing the recipient’s attention economy. The approach allows for new readings of folkloristic sources, contextualizing them in narrative cultures that constitute dynamic “regimes of attention.”

• Johannsen, Dirk & Ohrvik, Ane (2020). How to Be a Pilgrim: Guidebooks on the Norwegian St. Olav Ways and the Heritagization of Religion. Numen. ISSN 0029-5973. 67(5/6), p. 508–536. doi: 10.1163/15685276-12341600. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re-institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for vernacular religious practices to a wide audience. In this article we approach the current pilgrimage revival in Northern Europe as part of a trend toward a heritagization of religion that allows new religious self-understandings to emerge. We analyze pilgrim guidebooks to the St. Olav Ways with regard to their narrative scripts, detailing how they can create expectations, inform the pilgrims’ conduct, and direct their attention toward a history that translates into a heritage. Based on a corpus of published pilgrim journals and diaries, we argue that the guidebooks instruct a process of interpretive drift, which influence the pilgrims toward embracing and embodying a new role within the religious field: The guidebooks invite the pilgrims to take on the role of heirs to a medieval European tradition.

• Bowman, Marion; Johannsen, Dirk & Ohrvik, Ane (2020). Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe: Introduction to the Special Issue. Numen. ISSN 0029-5973. 67(5/6), p. 439–452. doi: 10.1163/15685276-12341597. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Largely inspired by the success of the Camino of Santiago de Compostela, pilgrimage is currently being rediscovered and re-presented even in areas where it was long discredited and discontinued for both theological and political reasons. This special issue of Numen is devoted to studies that show how pilgrimage is currently being reframed in various parts of Northern Europe where the physical and institutional infrastructure as well as the vernacular traditions of pilgrimage were interrupted, fragmented, or had disappeared altogether until recently. Today, diverse histories of disruption influence and inform the presentation, representation, and re-presentation of pilgrimage in these countries. Tracing an arc from Ireland via Scotland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to Estonia, the contributors to this special issue study how diverse groups of pilgrims and stakeholders operationalize history and heritage in relation to pilgrimage. Travelers with varied backgrounds and motivations, local and regional administrations and associations, minority groups and spiritual movements, the churches, and national initiatives create traditions and address contemporary concerns, adapt imported practices to local material culture, negotiate physical and metaphorical borders, and translate the past into heritage.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2019). Vis-Knut: Marginality in Folklore and FolkReligion. In Bremmer, Jan N. & Feldt, Laura (Ed.), Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity. Peeters Publishers. ISSN 9789042936744. p. 135–155. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv1q26smg.11. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The chapter traces the marginality narrative connected to the Norwegian cunning man Knut Rasmussen Nordgaarden (1792-1876), known as Vis-Knut, from its early use in a local religious conflict to its late nineteenth century use in an international debate on parapsychology and alternative spirituality. It is shown that emphasising marginality is a narrative ploy crucial to the folk religious alterity discourse. The three sections of this chapter focus chronologically on three different personas that Rasmussen embodied throughout his life. The first one is as a prophet (1818-1820), where he positioned himself at the centre of pre-existing conflicts and declared himself a persecuted ‘instrument of God’. The second one is as a cunning man (1820-1876), where the folkloristic endeavour was discovered to provide a new medial infrastructure suited to countering the discursive hegemony, telling Rasmussen’s story and to advertising his services. The third persona was as a modern saint (after 1870), where the narrative pattern of the legends about Rasmussen was transferred to literary and scholarly writings to undermine the religious and academic establishment by identifying them as oppressors.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2019). Narrative Strategies. In Koch, Anne & Wilkens, Katharina (Ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350066717. p. 143–156. doi: 10.5040/9781350066748.ch-013. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this chapter, we approach narrative strategies as a way to theorize the aesthetic formation and effect of both cultural narratives and narrative cultures from a cognitive perspective. Predictive processing-based models of story processing allow us to rethink the role of narration in religious discourse. Based on these models, we suggest a narratologically informed cognitive theory of religious perception, according to which religious worldviews can be understood as specific “augmented realities,” blends of narrative and experiential reality created by immersion into a narrative culture. In a first step, we argue that attracting attention is the most fundamental narrative strategy as it is the requirement for all other cultural, partisan, or individual storytelling strategies to develop their potential. After giving a limited account of the predictive processing framework’s concept of attention, we illustrate means and devices by which cultural narratives gain access to the mind. In a second step, we discuss imaginative strategies that further immersion into storyworlds. In the final step, we exemplify implementation strategies used for a lasting augmentation of reality with elements from these storyworlds.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2018). The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in Nineteenth-Century Norway. Folklore. ISSN 0015-587X. 129(1), p. 39–57. doi: 10.1080/0015587X.2017.1388033. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Cunning-folk offering a wide range of mostly supernatural services were a common part of European popular culture until at least the early twentieth century. Still, insight into how they established themselves as people with extraordinary abilities is limited. In this article I approach two of the best-documented cases of nineteenth-century Norwegian cunning-folk. The preacher-prophet, healer, and clairvoyant Knut Rasmussen (‘Vis-Knut’, 1792–1876) and the diviner and sorcerer Eilev Olsen (‘Spå-Eilev’, 1814–91) were ‘living legends’ who attracted clients from all over the country for more than fifty years. A wealth of historical and folkloristic sources allows us a rare glimpse into their early career stages and the dynamics by which two uneducated day labourers managed to become central actors in a local power play. An analysis of the local ‘folk religious fields’ details strategies, practices, and narratives used to cater to different factions, to convey claims of supernatural efficacy, and to create a regional market.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2018). On elves and freethinkers: criticism of religion and the emergence of the literary fantastic in Nordic literature. In Davidsen, Markus Altena (Eds.), Narrative and Belief. The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Fiction. Routledge. ISSN 9781138559660. p. 103–122. doi: 10.1080/0048721x.2016.1210394. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the late 19th century, the relationship between fictional literature and religion was up for debate. On the Nordic literary scene, this debate was triggered by Danish literary critic Georg Brandes in 1871, when he famously announced a turn towards critical realism. Fiction was identified as a possible link between secular and religious representations of reality, and modern literature was supposed to act as a catalyst for the criticism of religion. In the following years, literature became the medium to explore the ‘problem of religion’, the utopia of an atheist society and the mysteries of the human mind. This article traces major theoretical impulses and their literary substantiations from 1870s literary realism to the emergence of the literary fantastic in the 1890s. In the literary fantastic, the criticism of religion became religiously productive. Anticipating the cognitive study of religion, folkloristics explained supernatural concepts as the natural result of ordinary mental mechanisms. This radical naturalism allowed for an inclusion of the supernatural in literary realism. The case study of Haugtussa (1895), a work by the Norwegian author Arne Garborg, shows the lasting re-configuration of the understanding of religion that gave way to a ‘modern religiosity’ based on fiction.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2017). Erzählungen von Ende und Wiederkehr der Religion. Literatur- und Religionsverständnisse im nordischen Realismus. In Faber, Richard & Renger, Almut-Barbara (Ed.), Religion und Literatur. Konvergenzen und Divergenzen. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann. ISSN 9783826054952. p. 211–229. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2017). Religiöse Identitätsbildung. In Martínez, Matías (Eds.), Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Verlag J. B. Metzler. ISSN 9783476025104. p. 274–280. doi: 10.1007/978-3-476-05364-0_42. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Religionen setzen Imaginationspraktiken voraus, mit denen Wirklichkeit transformiert wird. Dem Erzählen kommt dabei eine besondere Rolle zu. Erzählungen haben zugleich modellierende und plausibilisierende Funktion: Sie vermitteln zwischen Sinneswelten und Sinnsystemen. Sie machen das Nicht-Präsente anwesend und modellieren damit religiöse Wirklichkeiten, in denen sinnlich Gegebenes als Ausdruck von etwas anderem erscheint. Zugleich werden diese transformierten Wirklichkeiten durch Erzählungen plausibilisiert. Erzählen ist somit ein notwendiger Teil religiöser Praxis; erst im Akt des Erzählens konsolidieren sich religiöse Identitäten, die ebenso dynamisch sind wie die Erzählkulturen, in denen sie sich ausbilden. Der Beitrag untersucht Erzählen im religiösen Kontext und die Dynamik religiöser Erzählkulturen.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2016). The history of religions read as fantasy: On the construction of (religious) ambiguity in the television show lost. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC). 28(2-3), p. 163–177. doi: 10.3138/jrpc.28.2-3.3459. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  With its intricate “mythology,” the ABC drama series Lost invites a wide range of religious interpretations. Starting off as a survivor drama, the show evolves into a fantastic epic, in which the pilot episode's initial question “Where are we?” triggers reflections such as “where do we come from, where are we going, and what are we” and is finally passed on to the world religions. Against the backdrop of Tzvetan Todorov's and Marianne Wünsch's work on the fantastic, we translate literary scholar Wolfgang Iser's aesthetic response theory into a tool for analyzing narrative structures of contemporary supernatural fiction. Taking storytelling and reception culture into account, this piece shows how Lost uses the enactment of religion(s) to perpetuate structural ambiguity concerning the series' genre. We identify the narrative devices used to create generic indeterminacy both in content and form of the Lost narrative. With this ambiguity reverberating on the religious traditions referred to, Lost suggests the history of religions as an extradiegetic analogue of the literary fantastic.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2016). On elves and freethinkers: criticism of religion and the emergence of the literary fantastic in Nordic literature. Religion. ISSN 0048-721X. 46(4), p. 591–610. doi: 10.1080/0048721X.2016.1210394. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the late 19th century, the relationship between fictional literature and religion was up for debate. On the Nordic literary scene, this debate was triggered by Danish literary critic Georg Brandes in 1871, when he famously announced a turn towards critical realism. Fiction was identified as a possible link between secular and religious representations of reality, and modern literature was supposed to act as a catalyst for the criticism of religion. In the following years, literature became the medium to explore the ‘problem of religion’, the utopia of an atheist society and the mysteries of the human mind. This article traces major theoretical impulses and their literary substantiations from 1870s literary realism to the emergence of the literary fantastic in the 1890s. In the literary fantastic, the criticism of religion became religiously productive. Anticipating the cognitive study of religion, folkloristics explained supernatural concepts as the natural result of ordinary mental mechanisms. This radical naturalism allowed for an inclusion of the supernatural in literary realism. The case study of Haugtussa (1895), a work by the Norwegian author Arne Garborg, shows the lasting re-configuration of the understanding of religion that gave way to a ‘modern religiosity’ based on fiction.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2016). The History of Religions, Read as Fantasy: On the Construction of (Religious) Ambiguity in the TV Show Lost. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC). 28(2-3), p. 164–178. doi: 10.3138/jrpc.28.2-3.3459. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2015). Der Beitrag der Religionswissenschaft zur Didaktik im Fachbereich "Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft". In Bietenhard, Sophia; Helbling, Dominik & Schmid, Kuno (Ed.), Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch. hep Verlag. ISSN 9783035502732. p. 213–219. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Das Verständnis vom sozialen, ethischen und religionskundlichen Lernen in der Schule hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten verändert. Diese Entwicklungen zeigen sich in verschiedenen Konzepten für die Schulen, in der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, in Lehrmitteln sowie im kantonsübergreifenden Projekt Lehrplan 21 unter der Bezeichnung «Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft». Notwendig werden nun weitere fachdidaktische Klärungen und theoretische Grundlegungen. Fachleute an pädagogischen Hochschulen und Universitäten legen mit diesem Studienbuch eine Textsammlung für die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen vor.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2015). Begriffe und Zusammenhänge: Okkultismus und Magie. In Bietenhard, Sophia; Helbling, Dominik & Schmid, Kuno (Ed.), Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch. hep Verlag. ISSN 9783035502732. p. 306–312. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Das Verständnis vom sozialen, ethischen und religionskundlichen Lernen in der Schule hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten verändert. Diese Entwicklungen zeigen sich in verschiedenen Konzepten für die Schulen, in der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, in Lehrmitteln sowie im kantonsübergreifenden Projekt Lehrplan 21 unter der Bezeichnung «Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft». Notwendig werden nun weitere fachdidaktische Klärungen und theoretische Grundlegungen. Fachleute an pädagogischen Hochschulen und Universitäten legen mit diesem Studienbuch eine Textsammlung für die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen vor.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2015). Entwicklungstheorien und die Strukturen religiösen Denkens in kognitionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive. In Bietenhard, Sophia; Helbling, Dominik & Schmid, Kuno (Ed.), Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch. hep Verlag. ISSN 9783035502732. p. 128–136. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Das Verständnis vom sozialen, ethischen und religionskundlichen Lernen in der Schule hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten verändert. Diese Entwicklungen zeigen sich in verschiedenen Konzepten für die Schulen, in der Lehrerinnen- und Lehrerbildung, in Lehrmitteln sowie im kantonsübergreifenden Projekt Lehrplan 21 unter der Bezeichnung «Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft». Notwendig werden nun weitere fachdidaktische Klärungen und theoretische Grundlegungen. Fachleute an pädagogischen Hochschulen und Universitäten legen mit diesem Studienbuch eine Textsammlung für die Aus- und Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen vor.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2015). 'Religion' als Stilmittel der Fantastik. Eine wirkungstheoretische Betrachtung der Fernsehserie LOST. In Mohn, Jürgen & Mohr, Hubert (Ed.), Die Medien der Religion. Pano Verlag. ISSN 9783290220129. p. 197–224. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Erzählungen vom Fremden: Zur numinosen Struktur des Motivs der Bergentrückung in der skandinavischen Überlieferung. Hôrin. ISSN 0945-9634. 17, p. 17–38. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Tvilsomme historier. Politikk, fortellerkunst og det overnaturlige. In Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (Ed.), "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270997725. p. 161–171. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Konstruktionsgeschichten. In Johannsen, Dirk & Brahier, Gabriela (Ed.), Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung. Ergon-Verlag. ISSN 9783899139457. p. 9–16. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Erzählungen sind wirksam. Sie prägen Selbstverständnisse, strukturieren kulturelle Wissensordnungen und konstituieren Gemeinschaften: Mit diesen Einsichten konnte sich Narrativität in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten als ein Grundbegriff der Kulturwissenschaften etablieren. Für die religionsbezogenen Wissenschaften legt sich ein Narrationsfokus schon aufgrund der Quellen nahe: In Schöpfungsgeschichten und Legenden, Konversionsberichten und Erlebnisschilderungen werden Religionen als Erzählgemeinschaften greifbar. Der vorliegende Band bündelt von der Narrationsforschung ausgehende Impulse und fragt nach der Funktion und der Form des Narrativen in religiösen Traditionen sowie in den mit Religion befassten Wissenschaften. In einführenden Beiträgen und Detailstudien aus Religionswissenschaft, Theologie, Philosophie, Soziologie und Narratologie werden narrative Konstruktionen von Lebensgeschichte und Mythos, Identitäten und Autoritäten behandelt und die narrativen Potentiale verschiedener Medien untersucht. Die Betrachtung narrativer Strukturen in religiösen Systemen, Rhetoriken und Selbstverständnissen erlaubt ungewohnte Einblicke in religionsgeschichtliche Dynamiken.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Erschriebene Religion. Die Vielfalt der Stimmen in den Religionserzählungen des modernen Durchbruchs. In Adogame, Afe; Echtler, Magnus & Freiberger, Oliver (Ed.), Alternative Voices. A Plurality Approach for Religious Studies. Essays in Honor of Ulrich Berner. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISSN 9783647540177. p. 36–55. doi: 10.13109/9783666540172.36. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Two Types of Magic in One Tradition? A Cognitive-Historiographical Case Study on the Interplay of Narratives and Rituals. In Ahn, Gregor; Nünning, Vera & Rupp, Jan (Ed.), Ritual and Narrative. Theoretical Explorations and Historical Case Studies. Transcript Verlag. ISSN 9783837625325. p. 165–187. doi: 10.14361/transcript.9783839425329.165. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2012). 'Religion' als diegetischer Raum. Eine narratologische Analyse von Rudolf Ottos Das Heilige. In Dietz, Thorsten & Matern, Harald (Ed.), Rudolf Otto. Subjekt und Religion. TVZ. ISSN 9783290176082. p. 237–256. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2011). No time to philosophize. Norwegian oral tradition and the cognitive economics of belief. In Martin, Luther H. & Sørensen, Jesper (Ed.), Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography. Equinox Publishing. ISSN 9781845537401. p. 77–88. doi: 10.4324/9781315478371-6. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2011). Kognition und Narration. Zur Tradierung von Mythen. In Klöcker, Michael & Tworuschka, Udo (Ed.), Handbuch der Religionen. Olzog Verlag GmbH. ISSN 9783789299001. p. 1–12. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2011). Deskriptorengeleitete Seminargestaltung. In Wehr, Silke & Tribelhorn, Thomas (Ed.), Bolognagerechte Hochschullehre. Beiträge aus der hochschuldidaktischen Praxis. Haupt Verlag. ISSN 9783258076416. p. 15–35. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Religion als Nebenprodukt der Evolution. Religionsgeschichte und die Modularität des Geistes. In Delgado, Mariano; Krüger, Oliver & Vergauwen, Guido (Ed.), Das Prinzip Evolution. Darwin und die Folgen für Religionstheorie und Philosophie. W. Kohlhammer GmbH. ISSN 9783170215016. p. 221–238. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Deschler-Erb, Sabine (2010). Introduction: Religion and Nature. In Borstner, Bojan; Gartner, Smiljana & Deschler-Erb, Sabine (Ed.), Historicizing Religion. Critical Approaches to Contemporary Concerns. EDIZIONI PLUS Pisa University Press. ISSN 9788884927354. p. 159–164. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Crossing the Ecotone. On the Narrative Representation of Nature as 'Wild'. In Borstner, Bojan; Gartner, Smiljana & Deschler-Erb, Sabine (Ed.), Historicizing Religion. Critical Approaches to Contemporary Concerns. EDIZIONI PLUS Pisa University Press. ISSN 9788884927354. p. 233–248. Full text in Research Archive

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• Valk, Ülo; Johannsen, Dirk; Bowman, Marion Irene; Būgienė, Lina & Misāne, Agita (2026). Placelore. Pilgrim Routes, Restoried Sites and Contested Spaces. Equinox Publishing. ISBN 9781800509061. 326 p. doi: https:/www.equinoxpub.com/projects/placelore-pilgrim-routes. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Places are meaningful locations that mark the human environment, defining its boundaries, limits, scopes, and coordinates. Their formation is often lost in history, and it can be difficult to determine their lifespan as they constantly transform and evolve. On the one hand, places determine who we are and where we belong: they manifest the traditions, values, habits, and memories that define us. On the other hand, we give life to these places, adding new layers of meaning to them, invigorating the past with individual interpretations and experiences, or contesting it by adding new stories. The volume presents an exploration of the intricate relationship between humans and their environment, focusing on the interplay of storytelling, traditional communities, and the concept of place.

• Otto, Bernd-Christian & Johannsen, Dirk (2021). Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination. De Gruyter Brill. ISBN 9789004466005. 368 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  To what extent were practitioners of magic inspired by fictional accounts of their art? In how far did the daunting narratives surrounding legendary magicians such as Theophilus of Adana, Cyprianus of Antioch, Johann Georg Faust or Agrippa of Nettesheim rely on real-world events or practices? Fourteen original case studies present material from late antiquity to the twenty-first century and explore these questions in a systematic manner. By coining the notion of ‘fictional practice’, the editors discuss the emergence of novel, imaginative types of magic from the nineteenth century onwards when fiction and practice came to be more and more intertwined or even fully amalgamated. This is the first comparative study that systematically relates fiction and practice in the history of magic.

• Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (2020). Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. De Gruyter Brill. ISBN 9789004421677. 376 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe.

• Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (2014). "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år. Novus Forlag. ISBN 9788270997725. 352 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Brahier, Gabriela (2013). Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung. Ergon-Verlag. ISBN 9783899139457. 428 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Erzählungen sind wirksam. Sie prägen Selbstverständnisse, strukturieren kulturelle Wissensordnungen und konstituieren Gemeinschaften: Mit diesen Einsichten konnte sich Narrativität in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten als ein Grundbegriff der Kulturwissenschaften etablieren. Für die religionsbezogenen Wissenschaften legt sich ein Narrationsfokus schon aufgrund der Quellen nahe: In Schöpfungsgeschichten und Legenden, Konversionsberichten und Erlebnisschilderungen werden Religionen als Erzählgemeinschaften greifbar. Der vorliegende Band bündelt von der Narrationsforschung ausgehende Impulse und fragt nach der Funktion und der Form des Narrativen in religiösen Traditionen sowie in den mit Religion befassten Wissenschaften. In einführenden Beiträgen und Detailstudien aus Religionswissenschaft, Theologie, Philosophie, Soziologie und Narratologie werden narrative Konstruktionen von Lebensgeschichte und Mythos, Identitäten und Autoritäten behandelt und die narrativen Potentiale verschiedener Medien untersucht. Die Betrachtung narrativer Strukturen in religiösen Systemen, Rhetoriken und Selbstverständnissen erlaubt ungewohnte Einblicke in religionsgeschichtliche Dynamiken.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2008). Das Numinose als kulturwissenschaftliche Kategorie. Norwegische Sagenwelt in religionswissenschaftlicher Deutung. W. Kohlhammer GmbH. ISBN 9783170205185. 288 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Inwieweit kann das Numinose als beschreibend-analytische Kategorie für eine sich als Kulturwissenschaft begreifende Religionswissenschaft dienen? Johannsen geht dieser Fragestellung anhand einer religionshistorischen Untersuchung der Volksüberlieferungen der norwegischen Provinz Telemark nach. Am Beispiel der im Berg hausenden Unterirdischen, die einen zentralen Aspekt volkstümlicher Religiosität in der Neuzeit verkörperten, wird die Ambivalenz der Sagendarstellung aufgedeckt: War einerseits jede Begegnung mit den Trollwesen bedrohlich, so verlockte doch andererseits ihre Schönheit und die Verheißung eines Lebens ohne Not, "viel besser als unter christlichen Leuten". Die narrativen Strukturen innerhalb der Überlieferung, mit denen diese Stilisierung zum Mysterium tremendum et fascinans vollzogen wird, bilden den Kern der vorliegenden Arbeit.

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• Johannsen, Dirk (2026). Enacting Storyworlds. Full text in Research Archive
• Jære, Lisbet & Johannsen, Dirk (2026). Utopiske samfunn inspirerte de første norske utvandrerne. [Internet]. Forskning.no. doi: https:/www.forskning.no/land-og-regioner-migrasjon-partner/utopiske-samfunn-inspirerte-de-forste-norske-utvandrerne/2680035. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Norske utvandrere til Amerika ble motivert av en pietistisk bevegelse som hadde felleseie og levde i sølibat. Denne gruppen ble Nord-Amerikas rikeste samfunn.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2026). Lucy and the Blind Magician: Active Inference and Distributed Epistemic Foraging in Esoteric Practice. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The presentation discusses the understanding of esoteric experiences as “controlled hallucinations” driven by strong priors, and argues that from an active inference perspective they could be better modeled as instances of epistemic foraging guided by uncertainty inscribed in shared generative models: targeted acts of sampling informed by likelihood mappings in esoteric teachings. Introducing active inference as a way of modelling dynamic agent-environment relations, I argue that conceptualizing both narrative and ritual prescriptions in terms of precision scripts / attentional protocols allows to better historicize the cognitive dynamics at play in esoteric practice.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2025). Enacting Storyworlds: Narrative practice in the Golden Dawn. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Predictive processing provides a plausible model of how esoteric practices may shape experiences by modulating expectations and patterning attention. In recent 4E formulations of the framework, this cultivation of the senses is part of a more general mechanism of reducing uncertainty by maximizing expected model evidence. Active inference shifts attention from acts of sense-making and predictive ‘real-making’ towards the process by which embodied agents ‘self-evidence’ their world in both perception and action. Both the representationalist predictive processing framework and the enactive formulation of active inference make it possible to revisit the concept of storyworlds, as proposed in cognitive narratology, to denote shared (and partial) generative models by which a world is actively inferred rather than mapped and interpreted. In this paper, I contrast these two approaches in their application to esoteric narrative and imaginative cultures, using examples of fictional practice in the early Golden Dawn: path-workings conducted by crafting fantasy literature and poetry.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2025). Narrating, predicting or enacting Zion? Worldmaking as Active Inference. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Drawing on recent methodological debates regarding representationalism within Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) (e.g., Ciołkosz, Teehan), this paper examines how a non-representational and enactive approach to active inference can be operationalized for the historical study of religious narrative cultures. It discusses how this perspective reshapes the object of historical study, not only in contrast to the modularity framework but also in relation to representationalist interpretations of predictive processing. By emphasizing that social and natural environments are actively inferred rather than interpreted, active inference redirects attention from acts of sense-making and predictive practices of real-making to the ways in which embodied agents ‘self-evidence’ their world through perception and action. Using the case of the Harmony Society, an early nineteenth-century millennialist group that crafted communal songs as perceptual meditations on their community and settlement envisioned as the emerging New Jerusalem, this paper compares the historiographical implications of modularity, predictive processing, and active inference-inspired approaches to narrative analysis. By highlighting the dynamics of storytelling that each framework reveals or obscures and exploring how they model shared storyworlds, this paper contrasts the notions of cultural agency, human-environment relations, and religion embedded in these differing models of the mind, leading to distinct interpretations of the Harmony Society and its narrative culture.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2024). Theorizing from first principles? Narrative worldmaking as active inference. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2023). Digitale folkeminner. Kunstig intelligens som tradisjonsbærer. Folkeminner, tidsskrift for Norsk Folkeminnelag. ISSN 1893-6458. 74, p. 41–49. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2023). "A new world" - Secular Perceptions and the Early Scandinavian Freethinker Movement. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2023). Religious and Secular Worldmaking: On Cognitive Historiography. Full text in Research Archive
• Zorgati, Ragnhild Johnsrud & Johannsen, Dirk (2022). Norgeshistorie - tro og tilhørighet. Episode 4: Religion møter det moderne samfunn. [Radio]. NRK P2. Full text in Research Archive
• Endresen, Cecilie; Johannsen, Dirk; Frøystad, Kathinka; Stensvold, Anne; Ruud, Arild Engelsen & Trangerud, Hanne Amanda [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2022). Jo, mange forsker på religion og politikk! Aftenposten (morgenutg. : trykt utg.). ISSN 0804-3116. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Jo, mange forsker på religion og politikk! «Akademikeres manglende interesse for religionenes innflytelse på internasjonal samfunnsutvikling er påfallende», skriver teologen Trond Bakkevig 26. oktober. Bakkevigs utspill er underlig. Religion og politikk er et stort, levende forskningsfelt. I Norge har akademikere beskjeftiget seg med temaer som de han nevner, i flere tiår, spesielt på religionsvitenskap og områdefagene. Bare fra vårt eget institutt kommer flere publikasjoner enn vi rekker å lese. Religion og politikk dukker opp i flere humanistiske og samfunnsvitenskapelige fag. Lesere som ønsker forskningsbasert kunnskap om religion og politikk, og ikke kan studere emner som «religion and politics» hos oss, anbefales Google Scholar. (Et enkelt søk for eksempel på «Trump + Evangelicals» eller «Putin + Orthodox Church» gir godt over 20.000 treff hver.) Skulle Bakkevig ha lyst til å få bedre kjennskap til UiOs omfattende forskning på feltet, er han hjertelig velkommen til å ta kontakt. Cecilie Endresen, førsteamanuensis, Kathinka Frøystad, professor, Dirk Johannsen, professor, Arild Engelsen Ruud, professor, Anne Stensvold, professor, Alp Eren Topal, postdoktor, Hanne Trangerud, stipendiat, Ragnhild Zorgati, førsteamanuensis v/Humanistisk fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo, tilknyttet forskningsnettverket Religion and Politics (RelPol), Institutt for kulturstudier og orientalske språk

• Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (2020). Preface. In Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (Ed.), Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. De Gruyter Brill. ISSN 9789004421677. p. VII–X. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe.

• Ohrvik, Ane; Johannsen, Dirk & Bowman, Marion (2019). "How to be a pilgrim: Heritagisation religion in Norwegian pilgrimage". Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bowman, Marion Irene (2019). Continuations and Disruptions of Pilgrimage in Northern Europe. Full text in Research Archive
• Ohrvik, Ane & Johannsen, Dirk (2019). "Re-Storied Places, New Pilgrims, and Old Saints: On the Heritagisation of Pilgrimage in Norway". Full text in Research Archive
• Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Forord: En vild endevending av al virkelighet. In Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (Ed.), "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år. Novus Forlag. ISSN 9788270997725. p. 9–16. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Religion als evolutionäres Nebenprodukt. Prospektiv. Theologisches und Religionswissenschaftliches aus Basel. ISSN 1420-9934. p. 8–10. Full text in Research Archive
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2009). Interessengeleitetes Studium. Eine niveaudeskriptorenorientierte Neukonzeption religionswissenschaftlicher Einführungsseminare. Traveaux Did@ctique. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The thesis includes the development and evaluation of revised introductory courses on the study of religion adjusted to the Bologna framework. In the first chapter, we define the general competencies to be obtained in the course of the study as well as the teaching outcomes for specific courses according to the Swiss national qualification framework (nqf.ch HS). Subsequently, we identify the concrete teaching aims for the level of the organization of each single teaching unit. In chapter two, we develop suitable teaching tools and student tasks, aiming at intense student participation and fostering a self-directed learning process. Chapter three presents different support measures for supervising individual students. Chapter four outlines different forms of assessment, aiming at maximum transparency and guidance throughout the learning process. The course structure, as outlined in the thesis, was tested in 2007 and 2008 at the University of Fribourg. Chapter five contains the evaluation and suggests improvements. Chapter six includes a revised tool for designing student-centered and transparent courses.

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