/ Research, Organizational Unit
Obituary: Prof. Thomas Troeger
The Faculty of Theology mourns the death of the 2014 honorary doctorate recipient Thomas Troeger.
Prof. Thomas Troeger died on April 3, 2022 in Portland, Maine (USA) following a prolonged illness.
Born on January 30, 1945 in the state of New York, Prof. Troeger was an instructor at several renowned universities in the United States; his last position prior to retirement was as Professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. His teaching and research focused on preaching and religious communication. In his numerous publications, he contributed to homelitical theory – especially by incorporating approaches from poetics – and researched the conditions for religious communication in the context of pluralistic societies. As a longstanding member of the Societas Homiletica and as its president, he made a significant contribution to internationalizing the academic discourse on preaching and religious communication, with a particularly strong influence on Switzerland and Germany. In addition, Thomas Troeger was recognized internationally as the author of poems and hymns that combine aesthetic finesse and theological reflection. The Faculty of Theology of the University of Basel will remember Thomas Troeger with great respect.