2021 Cohorts
In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis inspired us to adapt our curriculum for distance learning and engagement. This new model has allowed us to invite more scholars from around the world to participate in our training. In 2021, our public scholarship training convenes two cohorts of twelve scholars each. We’re excited about this opportunity to collaborate with so many brilliant thinkers!
Andrew Ali Aghapour
National Museum of American History
Andrew Ali Aghapour (he/him/his) is a scholar and comedian based in Durham, North Carolina. He is the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Religion in America Initiative at the National Museum of American History, and the co-author, with Peter Manseau, of the forthcoming Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Technology in America (Smithsonian Books, 2021). Andrew holds a Ph.D in religious studies from UNC Chapel Hill and an M.Phil in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge University. He is the writer/performer of Zara, a one person show about immigration and the history of monotheism. Andrew was the co-founder, with Michael Schulson, of Religion Dispatches' The Cubit, and the managing editor, under Myrna Sheldon, of Harvard Divinity School's Cosmologics.
Sahar Ahmed
Trinity College, Dublin
Sahar Ahmed is a PhD candidate in the School of Law at Trinity College Dublin. Her research examines and offers a reinterpretation of the right to freedom of religion under International Human Rights Law and Islamic jurisprudence. Sahar is from Lahore, Pakistan, where she worked as a Barrister for many years, and between all the time spent in London and now, Dublin, she no longer knows what’s ‘home’.
Kecia Ali
Boston University
Kecia Ali (Ph.D., Religion, Duke University) is Professor of Religion at Boston University, where she teaches a range of classes on Islam. Her research focuses on Islamic law; women and gender; ethics; and biography. Her books include Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (2006, expanded ed. 2016), Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (2010), Imam Shafi‘i: Scholar and Saint (2011), and The Lives of Muhammad (2014), about modern Muslim and non-Muslim biographies of Islam’s prophet. She co-edited the revised edition of A Guide for Women in Religion, which provides guidance for careers in religious studies and theology (2014). Her research also includes gender, ethics, and popular culture.
Akissi Britton
Rutgers University
Dr. Akissi Britton is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is an expert on African Diasporic religions, namely Lucumí/Santería. Her work explores the intersections of race, ethnicity/national identity, gender and religion; Black digital studies, Black feminisms, Black Atlantic/African Diaspora theory, and the impact of gentrification on diasporic religious communities. She is currently working on a book that examines an African American community of Lucumí practitioners, their engagements with other orisa practitioners throughout the African Diaspora, and the role of race, ethnicity/national identity, and gender in these engagements. Dr. Britton employs both traditional and digital ethnographic methods (social media) in her research to examine how orisa practitioners navigate difference, dissent and debate in building religious communities both online and off. She is a Lucumí priest, a scholar, a mama, and a binge-watching queen!
Samah Choudhury
Ithaca College
Dr. Samah Choudhury is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Ithaca College. She speaks and writes about Islam, humor, and the politics that accompany what it means to be socially legible in the United States. Her current book manuscript looks at the ways that Islam and Muslims are articulated through standup comedy and how they speak back to broader transnational practices and discourses of race, masculinity, and secularism.
Caleb Elfenbein
Grinnell College
Caleb Elfenbein is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and Religious Studies at Grinnell College, where he is also Director of the Center for the Humanities. His work explores religion, community, public life, and human welfare in different times and places. He has published on these themes as they relate to community life in Egypt, South Asia, and the United States. He is author of Fear in Our Hearts: What Islamophobia Tells Us about America (NYU Press) and is editor of MappingIslamophobia.org.
Amanda Furiasse
Hamline University
Amanda Furiasse received her PhD in Religion and Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Florida State University in 2018. Her research unfolds at the convergence of religion, health, and technology and explores how African communities use religious ritual as a mechanism to heal from violence and trauma. She is currently Visiting Professor of Religion at Hamline University and Co-Director of the Contagion, Religion, and Cities Project at the Center for the Study of Religion and the City at Morgan State University. She is also Co-Founder and Curator at the Religion, Art, and Technology Lab where she produces multisensory exhibitions for the public on the relationship between faith, aesthetics, and innovation. She has worked previously at the Museum of Florida History and Loyola University Museum of Art where she has produced public programming and educational curricula for K-12 learners and the general public. She maintains an active commitment to producing educational programming, public scholarship, and research which excites and inspires people to take an active role in their worlds and explore religion’s dynamic and evolving role in their lives and societies.
James Howard Hill, Jr.
Northwestern University
James Howard Hill, Jr is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religion at Northwestern University. His research primarily focuses on the relationship between religion, concepts of celebrity, and the politics of Black popular culture in the post-civil-rights era. His scholarship has been recognized and supported by The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (Heidelberg, Germany), the Forum for Theological Education, Arts, Religion, and Culture (ARC), Louisville Institute, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, Northwestern’s Social Science Research Council (SSRC), as well as Northwestern University’s Mellon Cluster Fellowship for Promising Research in Comparative Race and Diaspora studies. His public commentary on issues of race, popular music, sports, Black politics and religion have appeared in Black Agenda Report, The Syndicate, and Black Perspectives among other outlets.
Adrienne Krone
Allegheny College
Adrienne Krone is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Director of Jewish Life at Allegheny College. She has a Ph.D. in American Religion from Duke University. Her research focuses on contemporary religious food justice movements in North America and her current project is an ethnographic and historical study of the Jewish community farming movement.
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada
Kalamazoo College
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada is Assistant Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College where she teaches classes on religion and masculinity, Catholics in the Americas, urban religion, and religions of Latin America. She is an ethnographer and her research focuses on material culture, Catholicism, and embodiment. She is the author of Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2020), an ethnography about masculinity and men’s devotional lives in a gentrified neighborhood in New York City. Maldonado-Estrada is currently working on a project about devotional technologies that explores Catholic entrepreneurs and innovation. She is editor of the journal Material Religion: The Journal of Art, Objects, and Belief and co-chair of the Men and Masculinities Unit at the American Academy of Religion. She serves on the editorial board of the journal American Religion and was chosen for 2020-2022 cohort of Young Scholars in American Religion at IUPUI’s Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Religion from Princeton University and her B.A. in Sociology and Religion from Vassar College.
N.A. Mansour
Princeton University
N.A. Mansour is a historian and a PhD candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies, where she is writing a dissertation on the transition between manuscript and print in Arabic-language contexts. She produces podcasts for different venues, co-edits Hazine.info, and works for different museums and archives. She also writes for the general public on culture, Islam and history.
Anne Mocko
Concordia College
Anne Mocko is Associate Professor of Asian Religions at Concordia College in Moorhead, MN. She is a specialist in the religions of South Asia, and has spent several years living in Nepal, but has also spent time in India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. She is primarily interested in the ways ritual performances and ritual change can shape collective ideas and ideology. Her first book on the role of ritual in shaping and changing ideologies (Demoting Vishnu: Ritual, Politics, and the Unraveling of Nepal's Hindu Monarchy) was released by OUP in 2016, and was released in South Asia through Adarsh Books in 2020 under the title Unraveling the Crown. She is currently working on a popular-audience book (entitled Eco-Karma) about how the daily rituals and religious habits of India's Jains might help non-Jains to reimagine environmental impacts and responsibilities.
Kori Pacyniak
University of California, Riverside
Kori Pacyniak (they/them) holds a Master of Divinity (MDiv) from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Sacred Theology (STM) from Boston University School of Theology, and is currently a PhD student at the University of California, Riverside, focusing on Queer and Trans Studies in Religion. Kori’s academic work focuses on the intersection of queer and trans identities with religious and ethnic identities.
Kristian Petersen
Old Dominion University
Kristian Petersen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, and Language in the Han Kitab (Oxford University Press in 2017), and editor of Muslims in the Movies: A Global Anthology (ILEX Foundation & Harvard University Press, 2021), and New Approaches to Islam in Film (Routledge, 2021). He also co-hosts the New Books in Islamic Studies podcast on the New Books Network.
Krista Melanie Riley
Vanier College
Dr. Krista Melanie Riley (she/her/hers) is a pedagogical advisor at Vanier College in Montreal, Quebec. She holds a PhD in Communication Studies from Concordia University, where her research focused on discussions about gender, bodies, and sexuality on Muslim feminist blogs. Currently, she is in the final year of a three-year Participatory Action Research project looking at the experiences of Muslim college students in Quebec. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Muslimah Media Watch.
Jorge Juan Rodríguez V
Union Theological Seminary & Hispanic Summer Program
Jorge Juan Rodríguez V, the son of two Puerto Rican migrants, was raised by his mother, father, grandmother, and uncle in a small affordable housing community outside of Hartford, Connecticut. He has completed degrees in Biblical Studies, Social Theory, and Liberation Theologies and is currently completing a PhD in History at Union Theological Seminary. In addition to his academic work which explores the intersections of religion and progressive social movements, Jorge serves as the Associate Director for Strategic Programming at the Hispanic Summer Program—an organization that creates educational spaces focused on the academic study of religion and theology from a Latinx perspective. Jorge lives in Manhattan with his partner and very floofy Bernedoodle.
Lee Scharnick-Udemans
University of the Western Cape
Dr. Lee-Shae Salma Scharnick-Udemans is the Senior Researcher in the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice at the University of the Western Cape. With degrees in religious studies and media from the University of Cape Town, she also has extensive experience working in television production. Dr. Scharnick-Udemans researches, teaches, and supervises in the areas of religious diversity, pluralism, the political economy of religion, new religious movements, and the media.
Shannon Trosper Schorey
Red Hat Software
Dr. Shannon Trosper Schorey is a scholar, writer, and researcher in the tech industry. She is an expert in science and technology studies, American religious history, and new religious movements. Her work at Red Hat is focused on emerging and cloud technologies.
Annie Selak
Georgetown University
Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is a systematic theologian, specializing in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. She earned her Ph.D. from Boston College, and is also a proud graduate of the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley (M.Div) and Santa Clara University (BA, BS). Dr. Selak's dissertation, "Toward an Ecclesial Vision in the Shadow of Wounds," examined the wounds of racism and sexism in the Roman Catholic Church utilizing contemporary trauma theory and the ecclesiology of Karl Rahner. Her work has been featured in Modern Theology, Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Washington Post, America, and Commonweal. Dr. Selak currently serves as Associate Director of the Women's Center at Georgetown University.
Dheepa Sundaram
University of Denver
Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is scholar of performance, ritual, yoga, and digital culture in South Asia at the University of Denver which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. Her research examines the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics through online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Dr. Sundaram's current monograph project titled Globalizing Dharma examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively "branding" religious identities through a neoliberal "Vedicizing" of virtual spaces. Her most recent article explores how West Bengal’s Tourism initiatives use Instagram to foster virtual, ethnonationalist, social networks during Durga puja. Spotlighting issues of access/accessibility to religious spaces and the viability and visibility of online counter-narratives, especially those from minoritized/marginalized caste, gender, and class communities, Dr. Sundaram shows how Asur tribal groups who seek to recover an alternative history of their ancestor Mahisasura, are not only excluded, but, effaced through this kind of digital cultural marketing campaign. A forthcoming piece examines so-called YouTube yogis and how the commercial landscape of yoga as part of lifestyle "cures" becomes an unwitting partner in Hindu nationalist project of repatriating yoga as a national cultural artifact.
Jolyon Thomas
University of Pennsylvania
Jolyon Baraka Thomas (he/him/his) is assistant professor and interim graduate chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan and Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan. He is currently finishing a book on religion and public schooling in Japan and the United States, and his articles on religion and capitalism have appeared in Material Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. He also regularly writes for public-facing venues such as Killing the Buddha, Marginalia, The Revealer, Sacred Matters, and Tricycle.
Kaitlyn Ugoretz
University of California, Santa Barbara
Kaitlyn Ugoretz (she/her) is a digital anthropologist and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a BA and MA in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania with a double concentration in Chinese and Japanese studies. Her research interests include Japanese religions, globalization, media, and digital technology. Supported by dissertation fellowships from the Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation, she is conducting an ethnography of the growth of transnational, online Shinto communities based on social media. Kaitlyn hosts the educational YouTube channel Eat Pray Anime, which explores religion and history in Japanese pop culture, and writes on Asian religions for Religion For Breakfast.
Alana Vincent
University of Chester
Dr. Alana M. Vincent is Associate Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Religion and Imagination at the University of Chester. She works on post-Holocaust Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian dialogue, and popular culture (primarily science fiction and fantasy).
Brook Wilensky-Lanford
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Brook Wilensky-Lanford is the author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press, 2011), and former editor-in-chief of the online magazine of religion, culture and politics Killing the Buddha. She received her PhD in American Religion from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia. An Associate Editor of The Commons at the Association for Public Religion and Intellectual Life, Brook is fascinated by utopias, origin stories, religious liberalism, and spirituality.