About

I received my PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in August 2022. In January of that year, I became the Publications Coordinator for the American Academy of Religion, the position I currently hold. I primarily work on AAR’s book review website, Reading Religion, editing reviews and managing our database of books, authors, reviewers, and publishers. As of October 2023, I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Systematic Theology and Ethics at the University of Vienna. 

I work at the intersection of religion, philosophy, and ethics, especially in the American and European contexts. I am particularly interested in how our most basic philosophical and theological commitments influence the way we approach political and ethical problems. My dissertation focuses more narrowly on the concept of contingency, and explores the moral and political implications of the claim that the world is subject to contingent events - in theological terms, events that fall outside of God’s causal purview. On this view, much occurs contrary to God’s will and intentions, a claim that stands in contrast to the theological determinism/compatibilism embraced by many in the Christian tradition (and the Jewish and Islamic traditions too). For my part, I argue that there are in fact genuinely contingent events, and that a "fallen" world is best thought of as a world beset by contingency. In such a world, moral purity and political harmony are ideals we can strive for, but never fully reach. 

During my time as a PhD student, I was a teaching fellow in American Studies at TU Dortmund in Germany (2020-2021).  I also managed the website and social media accounts for the Religion and Its Publics Project, and edited their blog The Square (2018-2022). I have also produced a few audio documentaries for the Religion, Race, and Democracy Lab at UVA, and served as the co-project manager of a grant the Lab received from the the Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs (2020-2021). 

Before starting my PhD at UVa, I did an MA in Theology and Religion at Durham University. As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy and English literature at the University of Colorado. My academic work has appeared in the Journal of Religious Ethics, Modern Theology, and the European Journal for Philosophy of Religion. I have also written public-facing work for the Washington Post, Haaretz, and the Virginian-Pilot, among other publications.