LIZ BUCAR

Director of Sacred Writes
Professor of Religion, Northeastern University

Bucar is the Director of Sacred Writes and Professor of Religion at Northeastern University. An expert in comparative religious ethics who has published on topics ranging from gender reassignment surgery to the global politics of modest clothing, Bucar is the author of four books and two edited collections, including the award-winning trade book, Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress (Harvard University Press, 2017) and Stealing My Religion (Harvard University Press, 2022). Bucar’s public scholarship includes bylines in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among others, as well as several print, radio, and podcast interviews. She has a PhD in religious ethics from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. Follow her on Twitter @BucarLiz.

BROOK WILENSKY-LANFORD

Associate Director for Sacred Writes

Wilensky-Lanford is Sacred Writes’ Associate Director and a freelance writer and editor. A member of the 2021 Sacred Writes training cohort, she is a historian of race, religion and literature in the “Long Reconstruction,” and also obsessed with narrative, liberalism, and utopias. Brook is a contributor to The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why It Matters (Broadleaf Books, 2021), and the author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press, 2011). A former editor-in-chief of Killing the Buddha, her public scholarship has appeared in Religion Dispatches, Religion and Politics, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times Book Review, among others. She has a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University. Follow her on Twitter @modmyth. 

Keanna smigliani

Operations and Program Manager, Ethics Institute at Northeastern University

Smigliani is the Operations and Program Manager at Northeastern University's Ethics Institute. A trauma and conflict studies scholar with a special interest in holistic healing, public health policy, and the impact of trauma and violence on the human body and mind, Smigliani's own journey living with a rare neuro-cardiac illness has informed and guided her work immensely. Having served as Program Associate at the Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights, Surgical Coordinator in the Trauma, Emergency General Surgery, and Surgical Critical Care Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital, as well as Research Associate at the European Center for the Study of War and Peace, she is a pursuant of the crossroads that bridge research with trauma-informed healing and social change. Her research work and story have been featured in Gordon College's Fall 2022 issue of  STILLPOINT Magazine and The Bell. She has a double-B.A. in International Affairs and Peace & Conflict Studies from Gordon College. Follow her on Instagram @keanna.smigliani and Linkedin @KeannaSmigliani.

AMBRE DROMGOOLE

Ambre Dromgoole (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. She has published research in a variety of venues including the Journal of Popular Music Studies, Journal of Ethnomusicology, Transposition: Musique et sciences sociales, The Revealer, and Black Perspectives. She has presented work at the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, and the Christian Congregational Music Conference and lectured at Princeton University, Oberlin College and Conservatory, and the University of California, Riverside. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation; Louisville Institute; Yale Center for Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration; the Center for Lived Religion in the Digital Age at Saint Louis University; Sacred Writes; and the Crossroads Project. She has worked as a curricular consultant with the Nashville Symphony and the National Museum of African American Music and as a research consultant with Sound Diplomacy. Her dissertation positions the friendships and collaborations of an intimate circle of Black women gospel musicians as untilled sites of critical Black feminist engagement, sociohistorical consideration, and religious analysis.

SUZANNA KRIVULSKAYA

Suzanna Krivulskaya (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of History at California State University San Marcos, where she teaches courses in United States religion, gender, sexuality, and digital history. Krivulskaya specializes in modern U.S. history and studies the relationship between sexuality and religion. Her first book, Disgraced: How Sex Scandals Transformed American Protestantism (forthcoming from Oxford University Press), is a sweeping religious and cultural history of ministerial sex scandals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Krivulskaya’s work has appeared in both academic journals and popular outlets, and was honored by the 2019-2020 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award from the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network. In 2022, she was named a Public Fellow in Religion and LGBTQ+ Rights by the Public Religion Research Institute.

BRETT KRUTZSCH

Dr. Brett Krutzsch is an expert on LGBTQ politics and religion in the United States and a scholar at NYU's Center for Religion and Media, where he serves as editor of The Revealer. He is the author of the 2019 book Dying to Be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics from Oxford University Press. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Newsday, Medium, the Advocate, and he has been featured on NPR and several podcasts.

Jorge Rodriguez

Dr. Jorge Juan Rodriguez V, the son of two Puerto Rican migrants, grew up with his parents, grandmother, and uncle in a small affordable housing community in urban Connecticut. His story of diaspora, translanguaging, race, and religion propelled his academic journey, leading him to degrees in biblical studies, social theory, liberation theologies, and a Ph.D. in History from Union Theological Seminary. His scholarship examines the intersections of race, religion, and social movements with a particular focus on Black and Brown religious activism in the 20th century, including groups like the New York Young Lords. Dr. Rodríguez is an administrator and educator. In addition to his role as Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at Union Theological Seminary, Dr. Rodriguez serves full-time as the Associate Director for Strategic Programming at the Hispanic Summer Program—a nonprofit that creates year-round educational spaces for Latinx graduate students of religion. Additionally, Dr. Rodríguez frequently consults with universities and organizations across the country to help them imagine and build more just economic, curricular, and labor systems in their institutions. Learn more about his work at www.jjrodriguezv.com and follow him on Twitter at @jjrodv.

Dheepa Sundaram

Dr. Dheepa Sundaram (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of Hindu Studies at the University of Denver, which sits on the unceded tribal lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people. She is a scholar of hate politics, ritual, nationalism, and digital culture in South Asian contexts. In addition to being a founding member of the South Asian Scholar Activist Collective (SASAC) and coauthor of the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, her public-facing work has appeared in Religion News Service and The Immanent Frame. Her research focuses the formation of Hindu virtual religious publics through online platforms, social media, apps, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Her current monograph project, titled Globalizing Dharma: Ritual, Nationalism, and the Making of a Digital Hindu Brand, examines how commercial ritual websites fashion a new, digital canon for Hindu religious praxis, effectively marketing a cosmopolitan, dominant-caste Hinduism.

MEGAN GOODWIN
Founding Program Director for Sacred Writes (2016-2022)

Working at the intersection of gender, sexuality, race, and American politics, Megan Goodwin’s current research centers on Islamophobia, white supremacy, American minority religions (not cults!), and popular culture. Her first book, Abusing Religion: Narrative Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions, will be available in July 2020 through Rutgers University Press. Her public scholarship has appeared in the Maydan, the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Religion Dispatches, and several podcasts; she is also the co-host of the podcast Keeping It 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion. She is a former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for Creative and Innovative Pedagogy in the Humanities, and her teaching has been featured in Women in Higher Education and Elle. She has a PhD in religion and American culture from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Follow her on Twitter @mpgphd.

Butler’s career as a scholar, public intellectual, and professor embraces academy, the public and the church in various forms. From starting her public writing as a blogger for Religion Dispatches, she now writes opinion pieces on contemporary politics, religion, and race at The Guardian, Washington Post, and New York Times. She has also been a media commentator on religion politics and race on the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, and ABC. She has also served as a consultant to the PBS series God in America and the American Experience. A historian of American and African American religion, Professor Butler’s research and writing spans religion and politics, religion and gender, African American religion, sexuality, media, religion, and popular culture. Butler earned her PhD in religion from Vanderbilt. Follow her on Twitter @AntheaButler.

In her capacity as the vice president for partner engagement with Auburn Seminary, Groves fosters connections among justice-seeking organizations, leaders, and movements that display moral courage and faith commitments. She is the former director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program (2005-2014) and a former Auburn Seminary Senior Fellow. She earned her PhD in English Literature from the University of Maryland. Follow her on Twitter @SharonGr.

Hunt co-founded the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) in 1983 to foster collaboration and networking among ministers, activists, and scholars engaged in feminist work on religion. She is a feminist theologian and an active participant in the Roman Catholic women-church movement. She is the author of the award-winning Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of Friendship (Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991) and a regular contributor to publications including Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Concilium, Conscience, Religion Dispatches, and Mandragora. Hunt earned her from the Graduate Theological Union, her Masters in Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and her Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Follow her on Twitter @MaryEHunt.

Hurd’s work focuses on religion and politics, the politics of human rights and the right to religious freedom, the legal governance of religious diversity, US foreign relations, and the international politics of the Middle East. She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (Princeton 2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (Princeton 2015). She is Co-Principle Investigator, with Winnifred Sullivan, on a Luce-supported collaborative research project addressing the “Politics of Religion at Home and Abroad” (2016-2019). She earned her PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University. Follow her on Twitter @eshurd.

In addition to his role as Boston College’s Director of the International Studies Program, Owens is Professor of the Practice in theology and international studies, and a faculty affiliate in the Lynch School of Education's Formative Education Department, at Boston College. His work focuses on the challenge of fostering the common good of a religiously diverse society, and on the ethics of international relations. He is a former chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion, and previously served as Associate Director of Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. Owens earned his PhD in Religious Ethics from the University of Chicago, and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. Follow him on Twitter @erikowens.

Safi is a Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University and the William and Bettye Martin Musham Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center. He specializes in classical Islam and contemporary Islamic thought. Safi maintains a robust social media presence, including the podcast “Sufi Heart” for the BeHereNow Network and a weekly column for the On Being Project. Safi is a frequent contributor to popular media conversations on Islam, including in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Religion News Service, BBC, NPR, MSNBC, and international media. Safi earned his PhD in Islamic Studies from Duke University. Follow him on Twitter @ostadjaan.

Singh is a visiting professor of religion at Union Theological Seminary and the host of the “Spirited” podcast. He is a columnist for Religion News Service, Senior Religion Fellow for the Sikh Coalition, a board member for the Religion Newswriters Association, and a Truman National Security Fellow for the Truman National Security Project. Singh was 2018 Luce/ACLS Fellow for Religion, Journalism, and International Affairs and a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Center for Religion and Media. He was the 2017-2018 Henry R. Luce Initiative in Religion in International Affairs Post-Doctoral Fellow, also at NYU. His academic expertise focuses on the history of religious communities in South Asia. He is a frequent contributor to national and international news outlets as well as a consistent expert for television, radio, and print media. Singh earned his PhD in religion from Columbia University. Follow him on Twitter @SikhProf.