Dear friends and colleagues of the Religion, Cognition and Culture research unit (RCC)
(apologies for cross-postings),

It’s been a while since our last mail to you. We hope that you have looked at the website now and then. We try to keep it up-to-date, but there is always room for improvement. A few items that we want to draw attention to are the following. 

1. The Aarhus University reorganization: as some of you may have heard, our university has reorganized itself during the past two years and now things are moving very quickly (some would say frantically). We already have new telephone numbers and by January we will have new email addresses and websites. The former Section for the Study of Religion is now a section under the new Department of Culture and Society within the framework of the new Faculty of Arts. The RCC is still a research unit within the Section for the Study of Religion (thank goodness for that). 
2. RCC member Jesper Sørensen and Uffe Schjødt hosted a summer school this past August which turned out to be a great success. It was called “Experimental Methods in the Study of Cognition and Culture – Course at the Summer University Programme at Aarhus University”. He is currently involved in developing a broad Master course on cognition and culture together with Andreas Roepstorff at MINDLab.
3. The RCC is involved in several large-scale applications which have been invited for second rounds of international evaluations. We will keep you posted as things develop.
4. Some of our RCC-MINDLab scholars have made a big splash with their fire-walking publication. Please take a look at the news release at our website: http://teo.au.dk/en/research/current/cognition/nyheder/fire-walking-study-attracts-world-attention/. 
5. Also in the news is that RCC-MINDLab colleague Dimitris Xygalatas and RCC associate Lee McCorkle have become co-directors of a new cognition and religion center in Brno, Czech Republic called Laboratory for Experimental Research of Religion. Congratulations to our old friend Ales Chalupa, who founded the center and secured the necessary funding! See: http://www.muni.cz/phil/213840 and https://www.phil.muni.cz/relig/levyna.php 
6. You may have seen that the first two volumes of the RCC monograph series at Equinox have now appeared. The publisher has graciously given the members and associates of RCC a 10% discount. All you need to do is follow one or both of the following links and quote the code “RCC” when prompted during the process of ordering from the website. Here are the links: http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=256&keyword=narrative 
   http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=437&keyword=past 
   The third and fourth volumes will appear in 2012 (see the series website: http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/browse.asp?serid=31). 
7. Through our work in the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR), several RCC members are currently involved in establishing a new journal called the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion. The senior editors are Luther H. Martin, Pascal Boyer and Armin W. Geertz. The managing editors are Dimitris Xygalatas and Ryan McKay. The book reviews editor is Istvan Czachesz. We have a great international advisory board with a number of RCC people and associates. The publisher Equinox Publishing is currently developing the journal website. Please consider the journal for your next publication. Manuscripts can already be submitted to Dimitris Xygalatas. Together with the journals Journal of Cognition and Culture and Religion, Brain and Behavior, publication avenues for CSR papers have dramatically increased. 
8. Finally, please note that the next RCC event will be a great conference on evolution and religion in Aarhus (June 26-30, 2012). IACSR will also host its annual workshop in Aarhus on the day before (June 25^th). Please see the attached calls for papers and posters. For those of you who are still not IACSR members, please consider joining. It’s easy. Just go to the website: http://www.iacsr.com/iacsr/Membership.html and follow the instructions.

We hope you have all had a good 2011 and look very much forward to seeing you in 2012!

Yours truly

Armin W. Geertz, Jeppe Sinding Jensen and Jesper Sørensen