Sabina Ali
Graduate Student
- alisab@iu.edu
Research Interests
Religion, race, and colonialism, especially settler articulations of relationship to land
Graduate students
Samuel Allen
Graduate Student
- allesa@iu.edu
Research Interests
Greco-Roman intellectual and reception history, theories of providence, the ecclesiastical historians, Iamblichus, political theology, social and political philosophy
Allison Darmody
Graduate Student
- adarmody@iu.edu
Research Interests
Japanese Buddhism; Japanese religions; material culture; ethnography; gender; youth subcultures; religion and/as tourism; fashion; and popular culture
Joseph Decker
Graduate Student
- josdecke@iu.edu
Research Interests
Buddhist studies; Japanese Buddhism; religious pilgrimage; Japanese literature, ethnography, religious texts, art, and material culture
Alana Dickey
Graduate Student
- aladicke@iu.edu
- SY331
Office Hours
Wednesdays 1:30pm - 2:30pm; or by appointment
Research Interests
Disability, gender, and sexuality in Baha’i law and early American Baha’i history
Sweta Dutta
Graduate Student
- swdutta@iu.edu
- SY334
Office Hours
Tuesdays 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Research Interests
Religious traditions in early modern Bengal; authorship, audience, literary cultures and practices; political economy of deltaic Bengal; Islam and knowledge production in South Asia
Anton Ermakov
Graduate Student
- antermak@iu.edu
- SY334
Office Hours
Tuesdays 11:00am - 12:00pm or by appointment
Research Interests
Buddhism in Mongolia and Eastern Siberia; history of Buddhist studies, particularly in Russia and the USSR; religion and atheism in the Soviet Union; secular ritual
Connor Feliu
Graduate Student
- cfeliu@iu.edu
- SY333
Office Hours
Fridays 11:30am - 1:30pm
Research Interests
The intellectual and personal relationships of Chrisitan clerical learned magic practitioners (1200-1550); Islamic influences on Christian magic traditions; theurgy; monastic identity; methods of constructing Catholic orthodoxy
Blake Garland-Tirado
Graduate Student
- blagarla@iu.edu
Research Interests
Religious art and making practices of West Africans and the African Diaspora during Western colonialism; Yoruba culture; African domestic and international trade networks; weaving and textile work; African ancestry, ethnography, and spirituality
David Garner
Graduate Student
- dgarner6@iu.edu
Research Interests
20th-century American, Jewish, and Holocaust literatures, specifically examining the precise relationship between modern literature and politics and rethinking that relationship in terms of the Ancient Hebrew Prophets
Prakriti Goswami
Graduate Student
- prgoswam@iu.edu
Research Interests
Hindu devotional traditions, sanskrit commentaries of the Bhagavata, music and worship in Hinduism, living religions of India
Benjamin Huston
Graduate Student
- bendhust@iu.edu
- SY331
Office Hours
Thursdays 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Research Interests
Catholic monastic communities in the United States, and their relationship to the communities that surround them, both secular and religious
Thomas Clarke Jackson
Graduate Student
- jacksthc@iu.edu
- SY331
Office Hours
By appointment
Research Interests
Global philosophy; Huang-Lao Daoism; syncretic methodology; creolization; self-cultivation; Madhyamaka; all kinds of underappreciated philosophical thought.
Elisabeth K. Jones
Graduate Student
- joneelis@iu.edu
Research Interests
Feminist and Indigenous religious studies; ritual theory; embodied sanctity and prohibition; Hawaiian cosmogony and birthing moʻolelo; comparative traditions of feminine creative power
Steve Kaplin
Graduate Student
- skaplin@iu.edu
Research Interests
Jewish studies; American Judaism; Jewish spirituality and mysticism; Hasidism and neo-Hasidism; Jewish feminism; Jewish thought and theology
Maidah Khalid
Ph.D. Fall 2025
- maikhal@iu.edu
Research Interests
Islamic intellectual history; Islamic law and theology; medieval Islamicate historiography; Islam in South Asia
Ellen Loucks
Graduate Student
- elloucks@iu.edu
Research Interests
Modern missions movement, globalism, US and the world, 19th c. American evangelicalism, sympathy and sentimentalism
Amber Louisa Lowe
Graduate Student
- ambelowe@iu.edu
Research Interests
Phenomenology of Religion, Religion and Literature, Black Speculative Thought, Black Atlantic Religions, Critical Theory, Myth, Theories of Time, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler
Joanna Martin
Graduate Student
- jem35@iu.edu
Research Interests
Jewishness/Judaism; Messianic Judaism; identity and religious authenticity; African, African American, and Caribbean communities; Igbo people of Nigeria; identity, diaspora, genetics, and religious boundaries; interpretations of genetic science
Jessica Merritt
Ph.D. Fall 2025
- jessmerr@iu.edu
Research Interests
Comparative Indian philosophy; Bhakti movements; Sanskrit literature; commentarial traditions
Grace Morris
Graduate Student
- graemorr@iu.edu
- SY333
Office Hours
Mondays 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Research Interests
Medieval Christianity with a focus on the voices of women and queer narratives within theological and literary traditions
Keegan Nichols
Graduate Student
- keegnich@iu.edu
Research Interests
Global philosophy, 18th and 19th-century German intellectual history (esp. German Idealism), the problem of evil, philosophy of religion, political theory
Moriah Reichert
Graduate Student
- moreich@iu.edu
- SY332
Office Hours
By appointment
Research Interests
Religion and the body, religion, textuality, and cultural imagination, contemporary theology
Jason Smith
Graduate Student
- js156@iu.edu
- SY332
Office Hours
Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Research Interests
Medieval-Early Modern Japanese Buddhism; Conceptual metaphors; Literary tropes; Sengoku-Tokugawa transition; Neo-Confucianism, Zen, Pure Land, and Shintō; Japanese warriors
Dale Spicer
Graduate Student
- daespice@iu.edu
Research Interests
Classical Arabic biography; Al-Jahiz and Mu’tazili theology; religion and the body; early Muslim asceticism
Colby Townsend
Graduate Student
- colbtown@iu.edu
Research Interests
Religion in the Americas; the long eighteenth century; religion and literature; critical theories; gender and race studies; gothic literature
Ryo Uehara
Graduate Student
- ruehara@iu.edu
- SY332
Office Hours
Mondays 11:30am - 1:30pm
Research Interests
Japanese religion and folklore; Modern Japanese spirituality and its influences on cultural psychology and identity; stories derived from folk belief
Kathryn Vandrey
Graduate Student
- kvandrey@iu.edu
Research Interests
Confucianism, ritual studies, epistemology of early China, religion and gender, religious borrowing, funerary practices
Peter Warren
Graduate Student
- pewarre@iu.edu
Research Interests
American Methodism as social change agent, schisms in the American Christian experience, and the rise of the Christian Nationalist movement
Jaime Weaver
Graduate Student
- jaiweav@iu.edu
- SY332
Office Hours
Mondays 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Research Interests
Ritual studies; performance of religion; religious embodiment; theater and religion; Buddhist traditions; Buddhist diaspora; countercultural religious practice; Pyrrhonian skepticism; philosophy of religion.
Alina Williams
Graduate Student
- williali@iu.edu
Research Interests
Anthropology of religion, lived Catholicisms, Christianity in Eastern Europe, and modern Hungary
Borong Zhang
Graduate Student
- zhangbor@iu.edu
- SY331
Office Hours
Thursdays 10:00am - 11:00am
Research Interests
Religious practices and philosophy in early China, with a specific emphasis on Mohism, Confucianism and epistemology; Comparative religious ethics; Comparative hermeneutics in religion
Yuyuan Zhang
Graduate Student
- zhanyuyu@iu.edu
Research Interests
Comparative religious ethics; Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism; early modern French philosophy; Voltaire, Jesuit missionaries; human nature
Alex Zhou
Graduate Student
- yz181@iu.edu
- SY334
Office Hours
Tuesdays 11:00am - 12:00pm
Research Interests
Comparative studies between Greek and China, Classical Chinese thoughts, Zhuangzi, Ancient Greek philosophy, Plato
The College of Arts