Religions and Public Life at the Kenan Institute for Ethics explores the role of religions in historical and cultural context as they influence the lives of their adherents, interact with each other across time and geography, and contribute to the formation of institutions that make up the public sphere. This year, twelve Religions and Public Life Graduate Fellows have been selected from Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill to be a part of an interdisciplinary working group to engage questions regarding the place of religion in contemporary social and political life. In response to global shifts of 2022, this year’s theme will be “Religion, Peace and War.”
On the working group’s focus, Professor Malachi Hacohen notes, “At a time when borders are closing and walls are being erected, an interdisciplinary graduate student group is responding with a model of collaboration for our world. Bringing together students from Divinity and the Graduate School, and with campus wide support from the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Center for Jewish Studies, Duke Islamic Studies Center, and Duke University Middle East Studies Center, graduate students studying divergent regions of the globe will explore the relationship between immigration and religion, seeking religious paths to the reconstruction of human life.” Over the course of the academic year, the cohort will discuss and develop their respective projects, providing each other with mutual support and opportunities for collaboration. Their work will be shared on the Religions and Public Life website at the conclusion of the fellowship.
Previous years’ themes include “Immigration and Religion” (2020-22), “Church and State” (2019-20), “Pain and Joy: Polemics and Praise in Religious Communities” (2018-19), and “Minorities and Diasporas” (2017-18).
Meet the Fellows:
Mary Dance Berry
Mary Dance Berry is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religion, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament track. Her research interests center on divine violence and divine judgment/justice as well as comparative hermeneutics, feminist criticism, and postcolonial criticism. More specifically, her work examines how different communities, from American Evangelical readers to African biblical interpreters, read and understand often troublesome biblical texts and the import of their understandings. Mary earned a B.A. in government and classical studies at Sweet Briar College and an M.Div. at Duke Divinity School.
Yasaman Bhagban
Yasaman Baghban is an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts student at Duke University. Born in 1988, she grew up in Shiraz, Iran. After graduating from Shiraz University in chemical engineering, she changed her life's path through art. She received her M.A. in cinema from the Tehran University of Art in 2018. Since then, she has been a lecturer and independent documentary filmmaker. As a Middle Eastern female documentary filmmaker who was born and raised in Iran, social, cultural, and political issues are inseparable from her work.
Amanda Bolaños
Amanda Bolaños is a first year Th.D. candidate at Duke Divinity School studying Christian Theological Ethics. Amanda received her B.A. from Boston College in 2018, an M.A. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame in 2020, and an M.T.S. from Duke Divinity School in 2022. Her research interests include offering a real, pastoral, and critical perspective in looking at the systematic success and harm of religion in communities. Amanda hopes to ultimately build bridges and create a culture of inclusivity between the Academy and the people through the study and practice of Latinx Liberation theology, feminist theology, Catholic Social Teaching, and virtue ethics.
Tyng-Guang Chu
Tyng-Guang (Brian) Chu is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religion at Duke University. He is in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible track. His work focuses primarily on creation-imagery and the cosmological dimensions of Israel's cultic tradition in the Hebrew Bible. He plans to further explore how the notion of peace can be seen in creation narratives.
Meyra Çoban
Meyra Çoban is an M.A. student in bioethics and science policy at Duke University. Meyra studies the ethics of care and health care. Originally from Germany, Meyra studied philosophy and political science at the University of Edinburgh. Meyra's research is funded by Fulbright, DAAD and the German National Academic Foundation.
Ethan Foote
Ethan Foote is a bassist and composer working in jazz, new music, and other genres. He performs and writes in many contexts, including dance, theatre, and interdisciplinary art. In his recent chamber compositions, he has been motivated by an interest in how ideas of humanism and anti-humanism can be captured through engagement with gestural extremes. He received an MFA in composition from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2020 and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in composition at Duke University.
Emily Normand
Emily Normand is a second year M.T.S. student with a concentration in Theology and the Arts at Duke Divinity School. She is interested in questions of decolonial aesthetics, theological aesthetics, and intercultural and cross-cultural dialogue in the modern and contemporary visual arts, specifically between Latin America and Europe. Her current research is on the lithographs of French-Mexican artist, Jean Charlot, and the significance of his life and work as a pioneer in multicultural art and scholarship. Before coming to Duke, Emily graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame where she earned her B.A. in the Program of Liberal Studies.
Brooke Olmstead
Brooke Olmstead holds a B.A. in English and Biblical Studies from Briercrest College and an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School. She is currently beginning her second year of doctoral research in Duke’s Graduate Program in Religion. For several years, her research has focused on the reversal (and radicalization) of the Scriptural imagery for war and peace in the Gospel of Luke and in early Christian interpretation. In her more recent work, she asks how the interpretive practices of early Christians (and other readers from late antiquity) can challenge and broaden the scope of her own modern inclinations about reading and thinking. Following patristics scholars John Behr and Hans Boersma, her work defends the place of figural interpretations in the contemporary hermeneutical landscape.
Alejandra Salemi
Alejandra Salemi is a Doctoral student in the Population Health Sciences Department at Duke University. She is passionate about the intersection of public health and religion and wants to further explore how religion is a social determinant of public health. She is curious about the ways that religion impacts health decisions and behaviors, especially in different ethnic and racial communities and hopes to be a bridgebuilder between public health agencies and religious institutions. She is a recent graduate of Harvard University, with a Master of Theological Studies with a focus of Religion, Ethics, and Politics and also holds a Bachelor and Master of Public Health from the University of Florida. Alejandra is an immigrant from Colombia and is also passionate about increasing diversity and representation of Latinx scholars in academia, especially in religious and public health disciplines. She is a candidate for ordination in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Nikita Schwartzman
Nikita Schwartzman is a second-year M.A. student in religious studies at Duke University. Her academic interests revolve around investigating how gender dynamics and dependencies on colonial theories impacts interpretation of religious law and how it translates to legislation in Islamic countries.
Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi
Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi is a Teaching Fellow and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. Holding graduate degrees in architecture and religion, his work examines the religiosity of non-religious architecture. He draws on urban projects recognized by the Aga Khan Award for Architecture to show how spatial practices function in the construction of religious subjectivities. Ehsan has received recognition from institutions such as the University of Miami, Dumbarton Oaks’s Mellon Initiative, and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. His work has been published in the American Academy of Religion’s Reading Religion, Iran Namag, Maydan, and WIT Press. Ehsan also serves as a Graduate Fellow at the Parr Center for Ethics.
Isaac Villegas
Isaac S. Villegas is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program in Religion at Duke University. His research focuses on communities in the U.S./Mexico borderlands that have developed religious rituals and liturgies to remember and honor the lives of people who’ve died while crossing through the desert. More broadly, he is interested in the connection between the memorialization of victims and the formation of political imaginations.
Each year, 15 Kenan Graduate Fellows are selected to be part of an interdisciplinary research community focused on significant normative questions. This year’s cohort comes from Ph.D. programs in five faculties/schools, and 10 different departments at Duke. They will meet throughout the year with the general aim of enhancing each other’s ability to contribute to debates involving ethical issues, and to do so in ways that engage scholars and others within, and especially outside, their own academic disciplines. Professor Wayne Norman, who directs the Graduate Fellows program, notes that “This year’s Fellows all face a double challenge. They were selected because they are each tackling timely – and often timeless – questions in their Ph.D. dissertations: political polarization, diversity and inclusion in higher education, religion and violence, global inequality, and sources of bias in moral reasoning from law to political science. But they are also trying to make sense of our world and their own career paths as we struggle to climb out of a global pandemic.”
Some students, from disciplines such as philosophy, political theory, or theology, focus directly on fundamental ethical or political concepts and theories. Other Fellows, from the sciences and social sciences, try to understand phenomena that are relevant to major, and often controversial, public-policy debates. Still others attempt to resolve debates in their areas of research that seem to be sustained by long-standing disagreements over both empirical claims and ethical or ideological commitments.
Jackson Adamah is a Ghanaian Th.D. student studying Theology and Ethics at Duke University Divinity School. His research engages questions regarding the morality of debt through dialogue with political and economic theology, anthropology of money, and the history of West African currency exchanges. Jackson received a B.Sc. in Geomatic Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), an M.Div. from Campbell University, and a Th.M. from Duke.
Hunter Augeri
Hunter Augeri is a 4th year Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of English at Duke University. His research explores the cultural shifts and experimental living practices of 20th-century America with a focus on the ideological and material formation of suburbia.
Devon Carter
Devon Carter is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in musicology who studies the history of the voice. His in-progress dissertation discusses developments in vocal technique and aesthetics in Europe from roughly 1825 to 1850, focusing on the history and invention of the voice as metaphor for the liberal political self, as well as shifting gender norms and expectations around new methods of vocalization in opera singing. Devon is a member of the Duke University Scholars Program (Graduate Consul '22-'23 academic year), a James B. Duke Fellow, and current President of the Music Graduate Student Association. Prior to coming to Duke, he studied music and comparative literature (with a focus in literary translation) at Brown University as an undergraduate. He also occasionally performs with Duke Opera Theater.
Devin Creed
Devin Creed is a Ph.D. student in the History Department where he studies modern South Asia and the British Empire. His research interests include famine, food, and capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His dissertation examines ideologies and practices surrounding giving and nutrition in times of famine in North India and Bengal. He received a B.A. in Economics and English from Hillsdale College and an M.A. in History from Villanova University.
Gabriela Fernández-Miranda
Gabriela Fernández-Miranda is a Ph.D. student in Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke. She works in the intersection of cognitive psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience to understand the relationship between memory and forgiveness. Gabriela is interested in disentangling this relationship by considering variables as severity of the moral transgression, closeness between victim and perpetrator, and cultural differences. She also works in other projects related to morality, using imagination to overcome negative experiences, and self-control. She earned a M.A. in Psychology from Universidad de los Andes and a B.A. from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá, Colombia).
Daniela Goya-Tocchetto
Daniela Goya-Tocchetto is a Ph.D. Candidate in Management & Organizations at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. She holds a B.A. and a M.S. in Economics from UFRGS (Brazil), a M.S. in Philosophy & Public Policy from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from UFRGS (Brazil). Daniela previously worked as an adjunct professor at the College of Charleston, teaching courses in economics and political philosophy. She researches political biases and the psychology of socioeconomic inequality. Her main goal is to help provide a better understanding of the cognitive and motivated processes underlying the general acceptance of rising inequalities. Daniela’s work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Political Behavior, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Journal of Consumer Psychology; and in popular press outlets such as Behavioral Scientist and Politico.
Tayfun Gur
Tayfun Gur is a 4th year Ph.D. student in Philosophy. He works primarily in ethics, with interests in the history of philosophy and comparative philosophy. His dissertation explores the role of narratives and storytelling in our ethical cultivation and in shaping how we think about normative issues, with particular emphasis on our conceptions of identity and the possibility of tragic ethical dilemmas.
Shih-Han Huang
Shih-Han (Sally) Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at Duke University. She works on ethics, aesthetics, and Chinese philosophy. Her dissertation explores how the Zhuangzi, an ancient Daoist text, can shed light on the question of how to live. More specifically, it finds motivations in the Zhuangzi for establishing the ideal of playfulness as an appealing alternative to the familiar pursuit of meaningfulness.
Jihyun Jeong
Jihyun Jeong is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Duke, studying normative political philosophy and political theory. Her dissertation aims to theorize the ethics of victimhood within the contexts of oppression. It argues that the most important questions about victimhood have been neglected in both political theory and political science. First, what must be our attitude about victimhood—of our own and of others? Second, how can victimhood be channeled to ameliorate oppression? Exploring these crucial questions, her dissertation argues that victims of oppression must accept their victimhood and that victimhood, if rightly conceptualized, can be a positive political resource for the victims’ resistance. Jihyun’s research interests also include hate speech, freedom of speech, and legal theory. Before coming to Duke, Jihyun earned her B.A. in English at Seoul National University, J.D. at Korea University, and worked as a Korean lawyer at the ILO (International Labour Organization) headquarters.
Botian Liu
Botian Liu is a Ph.D. candidate in the philosophy department. He has a broad interest in philosophy while focusing on ethics and classical Chinese philosophy. His dissertation examines Aristotle and Confucians’ discussions on “how to become a better person” and whether following their advice helps us become one. Botian received a B.A. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Duke, and an M.A. in philosophy from Georgia State University.
Warren Lowell
Warren Lowell is a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in the joint-degree program in Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University. He researches how housing insecurity, gentrification, and homelessness are related to broader processes of racial inequality in the United States. His dissertation is on the recent growth of real estate investing in historic, Black neighborhoods in North Carolinian cities. In this project, he combines qualitative interviews with investors and residents with geospatial and statistical analysis of real estate transactions to tell the story of how investors have come to own an increasing share of property in Black neighborhoods and what the growing presence of investors in local housing markets means for the future of these neighborhoods and their original residents.
Miguel Martinez
Miguel Martinez is a Ph.D. Candidate in Duke’s Political Science studying Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) and Behavior and Identity broadly. His dissertation focuses on the role that racial ideologies play in forming the foundation for racial political attitudes and behaviors among Mexican immigrants in the U.S. Using a historical, comparative, and an ideological lens, Miguel hopes to show that Mexican immigrants hold a distinctive position in the American racial hierarchy where they can both be victims of discrimination but also perpetuators of it. Prior to arriving to Duke, Miguel graduated from Cornell University. He is a proud Mexican American and first-generation college student.
Leann Mclaren
Leann Mclaren is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Duke University. Her research interests are in race in American politics, Black political behavior, immigration, and group identity. Her dissertation research explores how Black immigrant candidates navigate identity in political campaigns. Her other projects include mapping Black political behavior through social movements, and political participation. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRFP), among others. She received her B.A. from the University of Connecticut, as well as her M.A. in political science from Duke University.
Wan Ning Seah
Wan Ning Seah is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Duke University. Her research focuses on the relationship between religion and politics in the history of political thought. Her dissertation examines the case for toleration in contexts that extend beyond democracy, and the ways in which regime type shapes the practice and conception of toleration. Her recent work examines the concept of civil religion in Rousseau’s Social Contract and its normative implications for our understanding of toleration in democratic societies. Wan Ning received her B.A. from Middlebury College.
Allison Wattenbarger
Allison Wattenbarger is a doctoral student at Duke Divinity School in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament with a secondary focus in Israel and Palestine Studies. Her research explores the relationship between the academic field of biblical studies and lived theology and politics in Israel and Palestine. Allison received a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School.
