Claudia Gialousis

• 2013 - 2017: Bachelor of Arts Teaching profession for Catholic religious education and German for grammar schools and comprehensive schools at RWTH Aachen University
• 2017 - 2021 Master of Education Teaching profession for Catholic religious education and German for grammar schools and comprehensive schools at RWTH Aachen University
• 2017 - 2021: Master of Arts Theology and Global Development at RWTH Aachen University
• 2017 - 2024: Student Assistant at the Institute for Catholic Theology at RWTH Aachen University
• 2024 - 2025: Research Assistant at the Institute for Catholic Theology at RWTH Aachen University
• Since June 2022: PhD project:The Religious Meaning-Making Potential of Technology. A Multi-Perspective Examination, Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Erfurt under the supervision of Professor Dr Patrick Becker, funded by Bischöfliches Studienwerk Cusanuswerk e.V.

The Religious Meaning-Making Potential of Technology. A Multi-Perspective Examination

The PhD project posits that technology serves as a significant source of meaning due to its deep cultural embedding and cognitive influence on epistemological understandings of the world. To access its efficacy, it is essential to explore the narratives associated with technology, particularly those surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) that circulate in Western contexts with great popularity. Drawing from cultural studies, this work asserts that narratives function as a vital cultural practice in constructing collective identities and beliefs. They play a crucial role in facilitating shared experiences of meaning, thereby creating coherence and continuity between past events and future possibilities and as such carry epistemological value. This research examines how these narratives act as binding agents for (religious) convictions within communities, highlighting their relational nature and contextual grounding. Consequently, narratives related to AI provide valuable insights into how individuals and groups in contemporary Western societies negotiate visions of (an ultimate) future alongside prevailing sets of convictions.

Building upon a broad study conducted at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge which examines the negotiation and content of AI narratives, this research takes a further step. Its primary focus is not only to comprehend the prevailing visions regarding AI but also to explore how these narratives offer an insight of collectively shared belief systems and sets of convictions. By integrating findings from cultural studies on narratives with postmodern epistemological concepts from the philosophy of religion, this study seeks to illuminate both the functions of narratives and their implications for existing theories within postmodern pragmatist perspectives on truth and reason. Consequently, this research aims to demonstrate that narratives provide valuable means to approach conviction sets and modes of belief in contemporary society through a lens applicable as a hermeneutical concept within theological thought.