Congratulations to Our Emerging Scholars

Congratulations to our new Emerging Scholars. These early career scholars were selected to participate in a residency workshop in Charlottesville this summer. Participants will undertake focused readings, share work, and plan collaborations on academic projects of mutual interest. They will also be invited to continue supporting the work of Religion and Its Publics through publications of an academic and journalistic nature.

Karen Bray, Wesleyan College

Karen Bray is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Philosophy, and the chair of Religious Studies and Philosophy, at Wesleyan College. Her research areas include continental philosophy of religion; feminist, critical disability, black studies, queer, political, and decolonial theories and theologies; and secularism and the postsecular. She is particularly interested in exploring how secular institutions and cultures behave theologically. 

Deborah Casewell, Liverpool Hope University

Deborah Casewell is Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at Liverpool Hope University. Her work focuses on the inter-relation of philosophy and theology in modern thought and culture. She is currently working on two projects: one on nothingness and God in modern philosophy and theology, and another on asceticism, vulnerability, and ethical action.

Janna Hunter-Bowman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Russell Johnson, University of Chicago

Russell Johnson is a PhD candidate in Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His research focuses on nonviolence, the philosophy of communication, and “us versus them” frameworks.

Jaisy Joseph, Boston College

Jaisy Joseph is finishing up her dissertation at Boston College entitled Reimagining Catholicity: An Interstitial Perspective. Her work brings postcolonial theory and ethnographic method into conversation with ecclesiological discussions of catholicity. She is particularly interested in how globalization and migration impact discussions of unity-in-diversity within the US Catholic Church. In the fall of 2018, she will begin her tenure-track appointment as an Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Seattle University.

Kyle Lambelet, Candler School of Theology

Dr. Kyle Lambelet is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and teaches and researches at the intersection of political theology, religious ethics, and social change. He is writing a book tentatively titled ¡Presente! Nonviolent Politics and the Resurrection of the Dead that develops an extended case study of the movement to close the School of the Americas. His current research explores the apocalyptic as a politically productive if dangerous lens for approaching ecological collapse.

Timothy McGee, Illinois College

Timothy McGee is the Chaplain and Coordinator of Interfaith and Inclusion Initiatives at Illinois College, having received his doctoral degree in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University in 2017. His research engages issues of race, class, and Christian theology, focusing especially on whiteness as a death-laden project of human redemption. His constructive reconsiderations of Christian doctrinal and political theology have been published in leading academic journals but also make their way into his preaching, teaching, and community engagement in Jacksonville, Illinois.

Meadhbh McIvor, University of Groningen

Méadhbh McIvor is a social anthropologist with a particular interest in the anthropologies of law and religion. Her​ research focuses on law, Christianity, and the politics of religious freedom in the contemporary United Kingdom, where she has carried out long-term participatory fieldwork split between a conservative Christian lobby group and a conservative evangelical church. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 2016, and is currently Assistant Professor in Religion, Law and Human Rights at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. 

Luis Menendez-Antuna, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

Luis Menéndez-Antuña is Assistant Professor of New Testament at California Lutheran University/Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and serves as Core Doctoral Faculty Member at the Graduate TheologicalUnion (Berkeley). His current research explores the queer and postcolonial afterlives of the biblical texts. He has published his research on journals such as Estudios Eclesiásticos, Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones, Biblical Interpretation, Journal of Religious Ethics, and Early Christianity. His first monograph on Revelation, Thinking Sex with the Great Whore: Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation is published by Routledge. 

Karen O’Donnell, Durham University 

Marika Rose, University of Winchester

Dr Marika Rose is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophical Theology at the University of Winchester. Her research focuses on the intersection of continental philosophy of religion and Christian theology, and she is currently working on a project about angels and cyborgs.

Hilary Scarsella, Vanderbilt University

Hilary is a PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University in the Graduate Department of Religion. She is also the Director of Theological Integrity for Into Account – an organization that offers advocacy and resources to survivors of sexual violence connected to communities of faith. Her current research uses theological and psychological resources to address the intersection of memory, trauma, and disciplines of thought and practice that have the potential to interrupt sexualized forms of harm.