Grantees
Jeannette Aguilar
Jeannette Aguilar is the director of the University Institute of Public Opinion (IUDOP), where she coordinates different research projects executed by the Institute. She holds a degree in psychology and masters in community psychology from Central American University Jose Simeón…
Febe Armanios
Febe Armanios is an assistant professor of history at Middlebury College. She joined the faculty in 2004 and teaches courses on the early Islamic and medieval history of the Middle East; the politics, religion and culture of the modern Middle…
Jiexia Zhai Autry
Dr. Jiexia Zhai Autry is is a program officer for East Asia at the Institute for Global Engagement. She is also affiliate research faculty at the Center for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, George Mason University. She received a bachelor's degree…
Zainal Abidin Bagir
Dr. Zainal Abidin Bagir is the executive director of the Center of Religious and Cross Cultural Studies, Gadjah Mada University. He received his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia while his master’s degree was obtained from…
Chad Bauman
Chad Bauman grew up in eastern Pennsylvania before going to Goshen College, in Northern Indiana, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree. He earned both an M.Div. and Ph.D. degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. Professor Bauman’s earliest research focused on the…
Daniela Bleichmar
Daniela Bleichmar holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Art History and History. She received her BA from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in History (History of Science) from Princeton University, where she trained as a cultural historian of…
Karen Brison
Karen Brison specializes in anthropology of childhood, religion and the study of language and culture. Her most recent research is in Fiji where she also runs a term abroad. In Fiji she is studying the acquisition of gender and cultural…
Graham K. Brown
Dr. Graham K. Brown is the director of the Centre for Development Studies and senior lecturer in the Politics of Development at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences of the University of Bath. He is also a research associate…
Richard Burgess
Richard Burgess studied at the University of Bristol (BA Architecture, 1977), London School of Theology (MA Biblical Hermeneutics, 1993), and the University of Birmingham (PhD Theology, 2004). An amended version of his PhD thesis was published by Paternoster as part…
Umar Danfulani
Dr. Umar Habila Dadem Danfulani is a reader of History of Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Jos, Nigeria, where he served as Dean of Students, Directorate of Students' Affairs from August 1999 to 2005.…
Ellen Dooley
A 2012 Interdisciplinary Research Group Fellow, Ellen is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate at USC. She graduated from Trinity University with a B.A. in Art History and Comparative Religion. Ellen specializes in seventeenth-century Spanish paintings; her dissertation focuses on art…
Robert Dowd
Rev. Robert Dowd is an assistant professor at the University of Notre Dame's Department of Political Science. Dowd specializes in African politics, with particular country expertise on Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. Most of his research has focused on religion, democracy…
Paul Freston
Paul Freston is the CIGI chair in religion and politics in global context at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is a distinguished senior fellow…
Musa Gaiya
Musa Gaiya is head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Jos. He's a specialist on African church history and new religious movements. Co-Principal Investigator Nigeria Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Centre Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative…
Emilie Garrigou-Kempton
Emilie Garrigou-Kempton holds a B.A and an M.A in Philosophy from the University of Bordeaux, France and an M.A in International Affairs from the University of Lyon, France. Her current research at USC focuses on the the influence of French…
Penelope Geng
Penelope Geng was born in Beijing, China, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. Before coming to USC, she received her B.A in English Literature at the University of Toronto and an M.A at the University of Chicago. At USC, she…
Henri Gooren
Henri Gooren is an assistant professor of anthropology at Oakland University in Michigan. His research interests include anthropology of religion, conversion models, Pentecostalism, Protestantism, Mormonism, Adventism, and Roman Catholicism in Latin America. His book Religious Conversion and Disaffiliation: Tracing Patterns…
Gordon Hanson
Gordon Hanson is director of the Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies and professor of economics at UC San Diego, where he holds faculty positions in the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Department of Economics. He…
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. He is a graduate of Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, and received his master’s degree in Geography and Urban Studies from Temple University located…
William Kay
William Kay is a professor of theology at Glyndŵr University in Wales. After undergraduate studies at Trinity College, Oxford, William worked part time with the University of Reading where he took an M.Ed. and a Ph.D. in comparative education and…
Karrie Koesel
Karrie Koesel is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Oregon. Her research agenda focuses on comparative politics, specializing in contemporary Chinese and Russian politics. Her research explores questions of regime durability and regime transitions, the political…
Álvaro Márquez
Álvaro D. Márquez is a USC Del Amo Fellow and a fourth-year doctoral candidate in American Studies and Ethnicity. A former Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, he obtained his B.A with honors in Modern American History in 2003 from Brown…
Danny McCain
Dr. Danny McCain set up a Department of Christian Studies at Rivers State University of Science and Technology in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in September 1988 to become the first International Institute for Christian Studies teaching fellow. In 1991, McCain and…
John McCauley
John McCauley is assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. He will receive his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010. He has a B.A. in economics from the College…
J. Gordon Melton
Dr. J. Gordon Melton, became Distinguished Professor of American Religious History of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies in Religion in March of 2011. He is the director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California.…
Stephen O'Leary
Stephen O'Leary studied comparative religion at Harvard University, took his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at Northwestern University and is currently an associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His research lies in the intersection of the…
Alexander Panchenko
Dr. Alexander Panchenko is the leading research fellow in the Institute of Russian Literature of Russian Academy of Science (Pushkinskii Dom) and head of the Center of Anthropology of Religion, EUSP. He is author of Studies in Popular Orthodoxy, Local…
Patrick Plattet
Patrick Plattet is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. He is cultural anthropologist interested in ritual practices and religious representations. In the field of religious anthropology, his interest lies primarily in the modes of representation of…
Brady Potts
Brady recently completed his Ph.D in the Sociology department at the University of Southern California and is now a postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, & Sciences. His dissertation examined the development of public discourse around…
Robin Shoaps
Robin Ann Shoaps is an assistant professor of anthropology and of the social sciences at the University of Chicago. She has been engaged in research sites in Guatemala and North America, broadly interrogating the linguistic and cultural construction of moral…
Daniel Jordan Smith
Daniel Jordan Smith joined the Department of Anthropology at Brown University in July 2001. He received an A.B. in sociology from Harvard University (1983), an M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University (1989), and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Emory University (1999).…
Ericka Swensson
Ericka is currently a sixth year ABD graduate student at USC. She received her undergraduate degree in European History from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an M.A in European History from California State University, Long Beach. She is…
George Villanueva
George Villanueva is a Ph.D. candidate in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He pursues questions about the changing global context of community, civil society, democracy, and the city. His dissertation will study issues of sustainable urban development…
Timothy Wadkins
Timothy H. Wadkins is an associate professor of religious studies and theology and the chair of Center for the Global Study of Religion at Canisius College. As a religious studies major at San Jose State University, Wadkins wrote his senior…
Richard Wood
Richard Wood is an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and the director of the Southwest Institute on Religion and Civil Society. He is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press book series "Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion,…
Chong Xiang
Chong Xiang is an associate professor of economics at Purdue University. His research interests include international trade, industrial organization, international finance, and applied econometrics. He has been published in many journals, including the Journal of International Economics, the Review of…