Professor of the History of Christianity
he/him
Dr. Roldán-Figueroa is a Puerto Rican scholar whose research, publications, and teaching engage a diversity of themes and topics in the history of Christianity from the 15th to the 20th century. He specializes in early modern global Christianity, Christianity in colonial Latin America, the intersectionality of Catholicism, race, and colonialism as well as the history of Christian spirituality. He is the author of The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Avila (1499-1569) (Brill, 2010), and The Martyrs of Japan: Publication History and Catholic Missions in the Spanish World (Spain, New Spain, and the Philippines, 1597–1700) (Brill, 2021). He is also co-editor of four additional volumes: Collected Works of Hanserd Knollys: Pamphlets on Religion (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2017); Exploring Christian Heritage – A Reader in History and Theology (Baylor University Press, 3rd rev. ed. 2024); Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P.: History, Philosophy, and Theology in the Age of European Expansion (December 2018, Brill); and, The Transatlantic Las Casas: Historical Trajectories, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Reception in History (Brill, 2022). He has published forty-one articles and book chapters and his articles have appeared in Critical Research on Religion, European History Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Journal, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History, The Seventeenth Century, and History of European Ideas. He has been the recipient of several awards including a Lilly Theological Scholar Grant, a Lilly Teaching Fellowship in Religion and Philosophy, numerous awards from the Hispanic Theological Initiative and a Greenleaf Visiting Scholar award from the Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico. He is the holder of the 2023-24, Rev. Robert Randall Distinguished Professorship in Christian Culture at Providence College. His courses and seminars include, Christianity in Colonial Latin America, Mystical Theology and Modernity, Christianity Beyond Early Modern Europe, and Spirituality in Historical Perspective.