Profiles in "Religious Studies" Expertise Area

  • Kefeli is a specialist of Islam in Eurasia and Central Asia. She conducts fieldwork in Muslim and Christian Tatar villages, which led her to appreciate religious diversity.
  • Ileana Orlich is President’s Professor of Romanian Studies and comparative literature in SILC, distinguished global futures scholar in Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory, and affiliate in SCETL and Melikian Center.
  • Stoker's research areas include Religion in the Americas, Sociology of Religion, Religion and Environmental Ethics, the American Social Gospel, and Religion in the American West.
  • Johnson is interested in the social perception of non-human agents across different religious and cultural worldviews.
  • Fessenden is the Steve and Margaret Forster Professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, and the Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict.
  • O'Donnell is the author of books exploring religion, culture, and politics in early America. She writes and teaches about American history, the Atlantic World, and Catholicism.
  • Tirosh-Samuelson writes on Jewish intellectual history with a focus on philosophy and mysticism in premodern Judaism, feminism and Jewish philosophy, religion and ecology, and religion, science, and technology.
  • With roots in American and Chinese cultures, Hoyt Tillman explores the divergence and commonalities within and between cultures. As a historian and sinologist, he focuses on how ways of thinking have changed over time.
  • Clay studies the religious history of Russia and Eurasia, the Eastern Christian tradition, confessional identities, new religious movements and the spiritual marketplace in the Russian Empire and its successor states.
  • Thomas’s research and teaching focus on world cultural processes and their constitutive effects on authority, agency, and identity. He studies how these processes affect religions and how religions engage them.