A major branch of the much discussed so-called digital humanities is computational text analysis. This quantitative approach to the study of texts requires—preferably large—collections of digital (or: digitized) texts.

Since an important branch of religious studies is also textual scholarship, it might be worthwhile to discuss if and how religious studies can benefit from these new methods. But it is also important to discuss the prerequisites and implications of such approaches.

In the session, I would like to give a very short introduction to computational analysis, but then mainly discuss with the participants:

• What computational methods are already applied in religious studies?
• What new methodological developments are potentially fruitful for religious studies?
• Which digital collections of religious texts exist, and how can they be used?
• How can the accessibility and interoperability of text collections be enhanced?