CURA Fellows 2017

Sana Haque, Masters Student in International Relations and International Communication

Sana Haque is presently in her final year at Boston University. She is pursuing a Master of Arts in International Relations and International Communications, with special focus in theory & policy and public relations, at the Pardee School of Global Studies. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelors of Arts in English and minor in History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. She resides in Lahore, Pakistan.

Daryl Ireland, Acting Director, Center for Global Christianity and Mission, School of Theology

Before coming to Boston University, Daryl Ireland taught at several academic institutions in Asia and the Pacific. He is now the Acting Director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission. In that position, he is involved in research projects that span the globe, from the Sanctuary Movement in North America to Revitalization movements in China.

Suegatha Kai-Rennie, Masters Student in Global Development Policy

Suegatha Kai-Rennie is currently a second year MA candidate at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Affairs. Her concentration is in International Development Policy. She enjoys studying policy issues surrounding women and girls health and social rights with Sub-Saharan Africa as a regional focus.

Amod Lele, Senior Educational Technologist, Office of Digital Learning and Innovation

Amod Lele is Lecturer in Philosophy, Visiting Researcher in the Centre for the Study of Asia, and Senior Educational Technologist in the Office of Digital Learning and Innovation at Boston University. He received his PhD in religious studies from Harvard University in 2007, writing his dissertation on the ethics of the Indian Buddhist thinker Ś?ntideva. He has published in Journal of Buddhist Ethics, Asian Studies Review, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He is a cofounder of the Indian Philosophy Blog and has his own blog on cross-cultural philosophy entitled Love of All Wisdom.

Chad Moore, PhD Student in Religion and Society

Chad Moore is a PhD student studying Religion and Society at the Graduate Division of Religious Studies. Hailing from Ft. Worth, Texas, Chad holds a B.A. in Religion from Hardin-Simmons University and an M.T.S. from Boston University School of Theology. His work focuses on the history of evangelical Christian politics in America. Chad’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach to 20th century American religious history with a particular focus on how religious social movements identify, select, create, and utilize “enemies” through rhetorical, discursive, economic, and social practices, most often for their own purposes. Seeking to understand these dynamics, Chad often finds himself juggling insights from social theory, psychology, theology, law, political science, and history. While at the GDRS, Chad hopes to become a better juggler, make a helpful contribution to the understanding of American religion, and continue honing his car-dodging skills while biking Boston’s busy streets.

Barbod Salimi, Assistant Professor, School of Theology

Barbod Salimi is Assistant Professor of Philosophical Psychology, Theological Ethics, and Peace Studies in the School of Theology at Boston University. His teaching and research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, religion, and ethics. His recent work has focused on peace and violence and he is currently working on his first book which explores the psychology of war.

Yang Shen, PhD Student in Religion and Society

Yang Shen is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Boston University. She is writing a dissertation on Han Buddhist monasticism as a way of dwelling in P.R China in the 2010s. Previously, she wrote about reading the classics as a common ritual for creating a historical subjunctive nourished by the Confucian tradition. Yang is interested in the formation processes of public cultures in contemporary China and the role played by the religions.

Bin Song, PhD Student in Religious Studies

Bin Song is a PhD candidate of Religious Studies at Boston University. With a research focus on comparative religion and Confucianism, Bin Song is designing a course “Ru (Confucian) Business儒商: economics, management and entrepreneurship in Asia,” to present Confucianism as an living social, economic and managerial tradition. As one chapter of this course, Bin Song’s paper “Confucianism, Gapponshugi and the Spirit of Japanese Capitalism” will be presented at the 2017-8 CURA Colloquium.

Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, University Chaplain

Brother Lawrence A. Whitney, LC† is a doctoral candidate in philosophical and comparative theology at the Boston University School of Theology and serves as University Chaplain for Community Life at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. His dissertation develops an alethic approach to the problem of religious language by engaging social scientific and Confucian ritual theories. He is also working on conceptualizing the phenomenon of Protestantization and, for the CURA colloquium, developing a religious philosophy for collaborative polity.

Emily A. Williamson, PhD Student in Anthropology

Emily Williamson is a PhD student in Anthropology at Boston University. Her current research focuses on questions of belonging, identity, and place among zongos, a network of stranger settlements in Ghana, West Africa. Emily holds a Master of Science in Architectural Studies from MIT, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia, and an undergraduate degree in Art History from Colby College.  Emily has also worked as an architect in Washington, DC, collaborated on cultural heritage projects in Ghana, Peru, and Haiti, and has taught at landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. For more information about her projects and publications, please visit her website at www.emilyannewilliamson.com.

Yongguang (Max) Xue, Research Assistant, Center for Global Christianity and Mission

Yongguang (Max) Xue is a graduate student in world Christianity at Boston University School of Theology. His current research focuses on the transnational turn in the study of world Christianity, exploring how transnational influence converges with the local development of Chinese churches to produce institutionalization (and even denominalization), and alternative national imagination to the state-led nationalism. Max is also interested in normativity and ethnographic methods.

Michael Zank, Professor of Religious Studies

Michael Zank (b.1958) is Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies and Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. A native of Germany who holds advanced degrees in Protestant Theology and Jewish Philosophy, Professor Zank has been on the Boston University College of Arts & Sciences faculty since 1994, teaching courses on subjects ranging from the Bible to the philosophical critique of religion. His research interests include German Jewish intellectual history, biblical hermeneutics, and political theology. He is the author of, most recently, Jüdische Religionsphilosophie als Apologie des Mosaismus (Tübingen 2016), a volume of essays on German-Jewish philosophy of religion, and the editor (with Allen Speight) of Politics, Religion and Political Theology (Amsterdam 2017). His next book, a brief history of Jerusalem, is forthcoming with Wiley-Blackwell.