strange the similar (2009). As the theoretical reflection of this field appeared as fragmentarily one-eyed, this research led Bergmann also to a specific investigation, published in a dense monograph In the Beginning is the Icon (2003, 2009), which has generated extensive comments in several international reviews, and which distinguished philosopher of religion Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale), declared “a breakthrough in theological aesthetics”. This book is now widely read and used in different fields such as art history, comparative religion, philosophy, and cinema theory. Research Bergmann has conducted field and site studies in the Sámi Arctic, Peruvian Andes, Aboriginal Australia, Mayan Yucatan, Korea, Kyrgyzstan and Tanzania, and he has published more than 300 publications since 1985, including a number of Nordic anthologies on the themes of diaconia, power, autonomy, ordinary life culture and pluralism. In the 1990s, he worked as a secretary for the Nordic Forum of Contextual Theology, and initiated and founded the Institute of Contextual Theology in Lund. Between 2002 and 2005 he participated in the Norwegian national research program on Religion in the Age of Globalization. He has also co-managed the interdisciplinary research group on Technical spaces of mobility (2003–07) and initiated and chaired the executive committee for the European Forum on the Study of Religion and Environment since 2005, when he convened the European Science Foundation's (ESF) workshop on Religion and the Environment in Europe. Awards, honors and service In 1993 Bergmann was conferred the award for ”younger promising research in environmental sciences” by Lund University's Centre for Environmental Science and Minister of the Environment Anna Lindh. He is a member of the Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (and leader of its section for philosophy, history of ideas & religion 2009–2011). He is the editor of the Series "Studies in Religion and the Environment/Studien zur Religion und Umwelt" at LIT Verlag (Berlin-Münster-Wien-Zürich-London), as well as member of several editorial boards, including series "Studies in Environmental Humanities" at Brill Rodopi (Leiden); Norsk Teologisk Tidskrift (Oslo); Junge Kirche (Uelzen); Blackwell Compass Religion/Christianity (Oxford); Ecotheology: The Journal of Religion, Nature and the Environment (London); Orizonturi Teologice (University of Oradea, Romania); Philosophy Activism Nature (Melbourne, Australia); Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology (Los Angeles). Furthermore, Bergmann serves as member of the Board of Advisors for the “International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture”, University of Florida (2005- ), as member of the steering committee for the international