Ulrike E. Auga

Rev. Prof. Ulrike E. Auga, PhD, née Ernst (November 24, 1964 in East Berlin) is a German Protestant theologian, and a cultural and religious studies scholar, and a gender theorist and epistemologist.

Introductory Summary

She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies (summa cum laude) from Humboldt University of Berlin whichshe earned in 2005. In 2022, she achieved an “Habilitation,” or “Venia legendi”— an advanced andsuperior teaching credential equivalent to a second PhD—in Religious Studies, Intercultural Theologyand Ecumenics for her book. An Epistemology of Religion and Gender: Biopolitics – Performativity –Agency.[1]

She is Professor of Religious Studies, and Intercultural Theology and Ecumenism at Hamburg University. She is both a Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) and a Princeton and Associated Researcher in an International Research Training Group (IRTG) entitled “Transformative Religion: Religion as Situated Knowledge in Processes of Social Knowledge Production” as well as a member of the Center of Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Dr. Auga is also an ordained minister in the Protestant Church of Berlin (EKBO). Her pastoral and academic work has been shaped by her activist participation in the 1989 Peaceful Revolution in East-Germany. Furthermore, her life in Johannesburg (South Africa), Bamako (Mali) and Jerusalem, and her research on Mongolia, South Korea and Japan have been influential in the development of her own academic, theological and philosophical concepts.