CURA Colloquium Fellows 2020-2021
Alexandra Bayer, PhD Candidate, Graduate Program in Religion, College of Arts and Sciences
Alexandra Bayer is a third year PhD student in the Department of Religion at BU focusing on contemporary American Islam and working under Professor Kecia Ali. Her primary research areas include the intersection of religious, ethnic, and political identities; gender; and the creation and use of sacred space.
Erick Berrelleza, PhD Candidate, Sociology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Erick Berrelleza is a doctoral candidate in sociology in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His research interests lie at the intersection of the sociology of religion, urban & community studies, and immigration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in North Carolina, his dissertation – The Religious Lives of Latin American Immigrants: Geographies and Shifting Landscapes in the New South – examines the lived religious practices of Latin Americans in relation to space and place. He takes a comparative approach in this project, focusing on participants’ everyday lives and strategies of resistance in a metropolitan center and a rural town. He is the 2020-2021 Visiting Scholar at the Boisi Center for Religion & American Public Life at Boston College. While at CURA, Erick will be exploring the religious communal practice of Latinos as emplaced religion – shaped and negotiated in relation to everyday threats and dangers.
Steven Bingaman, Graduate Student, School of Theology
Steven Bingaman is a candidate for a Master’s Degree in Sacred Theology at the BU School of Theology. He earned a Master’s of Divinity from BU with a concentration in chaplaincy. He also received a certificate in Religion and Conflict Transformation for the Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium and a Master’s in Professional Studies from the New York Theological Seminary urban ministry. He is a minister and the Executive Director of The Outdoor Church in Cambridge that brings the Church to the chronically homeless people of Cambridge who, because of rejection, fear, shame, mental illness, substance abuse, or other reasons, cannot or will not enter conventional churches. His interests include the practical intersection and integration of rights-based approaches and spiritual frameworks to homelessness.
Morgan Crago, PhD Student, School of Theology
As student of the history of Christianity, Morgan focuses on the 20th century Pentecostal movement in Latin America and the United States. She is interested in how this stream of Christianity–with its unique understanding of miracles, eschatology, the Holy Spirit, and extraordinary gifts–has interacted with other Protestant groups over the century. Since Pentecostalism has been a mission-oriented movement since its beginning, she finds studying these dynamics to be most fruitful and exciting in cases of transnational comparisons. As a CURA fellow this year, her paper will focus on the interactions between the more established Presbyterian churches and the early Pentecostal missions in Brazil. As her own writing often focuses on church institutions and theological debates, she looks forward to participating with the other CURA fellows who pay attention to how transnational political and economic forces also bear on religious institutions and discourses.
Calynn Dowler, PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Calynn Dowler is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Boston University. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental anthropology, religious studies, and the anthropology of development. Her dissertation explores shifting material and ethical entanglements with water in the Sundarbans delta of West Bengal, India. She received her MA in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex as a Fulbright scholar and BA in Political Science and German at Gettysburg College.
Tyler J. Fuller, PhD Candidate, Graduate Program in Religion, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Tyler J. Fuller is a second year Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religion. He is training as a socio-cultural scholar of religion and public health and his research interests focus on lived religion, narrative, and collective memory in relation to health-seeking behaviors and faith-based health education and promotion. He is currently examining Catholic experiences of virtual sacramental rituals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tyler holds an M.T.S. in Modern Religious Thought and Experience, with a certificate in Religion and Health, and an M.P.H. in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education from the Emory University Religion and Public Health Dual Degree Program.
Kathryn Lamontagne, Lecturer, College of General Studies
Kathryn Lamontagne is a lecturer in the Division of Social Sciences at BU’s College of General Studies. She completed her PhD in History at Boston University in 2020. Her interdisciplinary work focuses on notions of womanhood, sexuality, marginalization, conversion, and the power of economic privilege in the English Catholic community of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Her submission for CURA will look more closely at the lives of queer Catholic women in Southern England over the early 20th century.
Jennifer Lewis, PhD Candidate, School of Theology
Jennifer Lewis is a third-year doctoral student in Practical Theology at BU’s School of Theology, focusing on the intersection of religious education, spirituality, and social neuroscience. She is particularly interested in neuroscientific perspectives on learning and contemplative practices, the role of emotion and embodiment in religious formation, and the relationship between religious learning, spiritual practice and political engagement. Her current research explores the pedagogical and spiritual dimensions of religiously motivated political and social activism.
Samantha Miller, Masters Student, Pardee School of Global Studies
Samantha is a Master’s Student in the Global Policy program at the Pardee school with a focus on global health policy. Her interests include women’s rights, development, international cooperation, and Russian history and politics, the focus of her CURA project. Her research is focused on women’s reproductive health and its connection to global development. Samantha has a BA in International Relations and Economics also from Boston University.
Leo (Mohammad) Moradi, PhD Student, Political Science, College of Arts and Sciences
Leo is a doctoral student in Political Philosophy at Boston University. Before coming to Boston, he studied philosophy and politics in Iran, the Netherlands, and Hungary. Leo is interested in the theoretical foundations of republicanism, liberalism, and American political thought. He is interested in how those foundations have been articulated, defended, and, specifically, dealt with the theological-political problem. Such a venture, he has learned, would not be possible without a persistent study of the great minds, ancient and modern, whose wisdom continues to be relevant. In his spare time, Leo likes to cook, drink, and listen to classical music.
Fernando Ona, PhD Student, School of Theology
In Fall 2020, Fernando will start his Doctor of Ministry in Transformational Leadership as the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Fellow in the School of Theology. This past spring, he graduated from BUSTH with his MDiv with a focus in Chaplaincy and a certificate in Religion and Conflict Transformation. Fernando’s research, teaching and service has been engaged in public health work with refugees, internally displaced populations, and asylum seekers who are survivors of torture. Fernando also works with ultra-poor populations living in informal settlements. Fernando’s project focuses on trauma-responsive spiritual-therapeutic interventions within landscapes of complex humanitarian emergencies.
Gabriel Paxton, Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate Program in Religion, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Gabriel Paxton is a second-year doctoral student in the Religion in Philosophy, Politics, and Society area of specialization in the Graduate Program of Religion. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Winthrop University with a B.A. in Political Science and earned his M.A. with distinction from Central European University in Nationalism Studies. His research interests include religious nationalism, American evangelicalism, and the study of religion in American progressive and left-wing political movements. Currently, his research looks at the portrayal of U.S. political Candidate’s religion/religiosity in editorial cartoons during 21st century presidential campaigns. Prior to entering BU, he held an adjunct position in the Political Science and Philosophy & Religion departments at Winthrop University, where he taught courses on American Government and Religion in the Public Sphere.