The twentieth and final session of the webinar series “Pilgrimage in the World,” entitled “Pilgrimage in China,” was held in October 2025, organized jointly by the Islamic Research Foundation and the International Affairs Department of Astan Quds Razavi.
The session featured a presentation by Professor Marcus Bingenheimer of Temple University, Philadelphia, USA, who examined the cultural, social, and spiritual dimensions of pilgrimage in China. The program also included an overview of the scholarly achievements of the preceding sessions in the series.
Earlier sessions addressed topics such as “Pilgrimage, Cultural Values, and Collective Identity,” “Pilgrimage and Ethics in the Abrahamic Traditions,” and “The Financial Management of Sacred Sites.” Across these sessions, Iranian and international scholars presented papers offering diverse perspectives on various aspects of pilgrimage in different cultures and societies.
The concluding session, with its focus on the Chinese experience of pilgrimage, both synthesized the earlier discussions and offered a comparative examination of the role of pilgrimage in diverse cultures. As the final component of the “Pilgrimage in the World” series, this program provided an overarching view of the trajectory of debates and themes in pilgrimage studies.
