Professor Suvi-Maria Saarelainen will deliver the ISERT presidential address. She is an Associate Professor in Theology of Wellbeing and Professional Skills (tenure track) and Pedagogical Head at the School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland. Her research explores existential health, lived theology, and professional competence in care, with particular focus on the fourth age and end-of-life contexts. As a long-standing board member and outgoing President of ISERT, she has contributed to advancing empirical theology as an interdisciplinary and context-sensitive field. She actively collaborates in national and international projects and is committed to developing innovative approaches to existential care and theological research.

Professor Saarelainen will address the question: ‘What Makes Theology, Theology? Reflections from the Threshold of Empirical Theologies’. She says, as I conclude my term as President of ISERT, this lecture offers both a retrospective and forward-looking exploration of empirical theology as a field situated between tradition and transformation. At its heart lies a persistent question: what makes theology, theology? In an era of interdisciplinary collaboration and growing demand for societal relevance, the challenge is not only to preserve theology’s distinctiveness but to ask: whose theology, which experience, and what boundaries? Should we, in fact, speak of empirical theologies in the plural? Who has the power—and the privilege—to define theology’s core? These questions matter deeply as theology engages with lived realities in increasingly diverse and contested spaces. How can we respond to complexity without losing theological depth? How might lived experience, public relevance, and disciplinary openness co-exist within theological inquiry? Drawing from the example of theology of wellbeing, I reflect on how empirical theology opens new scholarly and practical avenues, especially in cross- and multidisciplinary constellations. At the same time, I ask: how do we ensure we do not dilute theology’s essence in the process? Taken together, these trajectories invite us to reconsider what theologizing means today, where it happens, and who participates in shaping it. Finally, I reflect on the future of ISERT as a scholarly community. What kind of intellectual space do we want to nurture? What forms of dialogue, risk-taking, and inclusion are needed to ensure that empirical theology remains responsive, critical, and meaningful?