MSCA Project

TheoFem: Lay Women as International Experts and Theologians avant-la-lettre. Legacies and Entangled Histories (1945-1962)

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With Dries Bosschaert as her supervisor (and Patrick Pasture as co-supervisor in the Faculty of Arts and MoSa group), Natalia Núñez Bargueño will work on her MSCA project: TheoFem: Lay Women as International Experts and Theologians avant-la-lettre. Legacies and Entangled Histories (1945-1962).

While many studies have examined the experiences of women during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), their pioneering role in the years leading up to the Council has been greatly overlooked. TheoFem will highlight the significant and complex contributions of European Catholic women as international agents, thinkers, and proto-theologians from the end of World War II. It will examine the Church’s attempt to expand the ranks of lay International Catholic Organisations (ICOs) in the heated post-war, early Cold War and decolonization period. As ICOs were operating trans/nationally in the fields of health, social care, and humanitarianism (areas that, at the time, were increasingly being associated with female action), this effort involved a greater promotion of lay women’s thought and work in public life on a global scale. The project delves into the entangled and cultural history of Belgium and Spain (in relation to the French and Spanish speaking worlds) with a specific focus on the contributions (and representation) of Catholic women to global networks of care and thought.