Historique du projet

The Eurel site is now more than 15 years old.
The initial project, launched by Jean-Paul Willaime (sociologist of religions, researcher at the CNRS in Strasbourg in what is currently UMR 7354 DRES), was of a printed publication on religious demography in Europe. Soon, it evolved into opening an information website on the sociology of religion.
In 2001, with the participation of Francis Messner, a lawyer and researcher at the CNRS, it was decided to include issued of law of religion, in particular state-religion relations.
Jean-Paul Willaime then involved the Parisian research centre GSRL (Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, CNRS-EPHE) in the project.
The site was opened to the public in 2003 ; since then, the two research centres (DRES and GSRL) have contributed to the project, which has been managed since 2010 by Anne-Laure Zwilling (CNRS research fellow at UMR 7354).