The Classical Ideas Podcast

Tazeen M. Ali (she/her) is assistant professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, US Islam, and race and religion in America. She is the author of The Women's Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam (NYU Press, 2022). She has also published in Religion & Politics (now ARC Mag), The Conversation, The Maydan, and Middle East Eye. Ali is currently writing her second book, Muslims on Screen: Racism and Sexuality in Anglo-American Islam, which analyzes entertainment media projects produced by British and American Muslims. She also serves on the advisory board of the National Museum of American Religion. Ali earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University in 2019.

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Alexiana Fry (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen at the Faculty of Theology for a project entitled "Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism." Her first book, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, released in October 2023 with Lexington Press. She received her Ph.D. in Old Testament from Stellenbosch University (ZA) in December 2021. Her dissertation project focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, migration, and trauma in specific biblical texts, and she continues to explore these constitutive features in both ancient and modern contexts.

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Peach (they/them) is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute. They are conducting ethnographic research into the dynamics of resistance and compliance in women's interfaith organisations in the contemporary British public sphere. One of their key interests is how often-dismissed 'convivial' activities like crafting and food-sharing create conditions for meaningful relationship building in interfaith spaces. Recently they have been puzzling over the interactions between interfaith organising, counter-extremism policy and (anti-)carceral feminisms in the UK. They are funded by the Polonsky-Coexist and Woolf Institute scholarships.

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Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and affiliated faculty at the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023) and the co-editor of American Examples: A New Conversation about Religion, vol. 3 (University of Alabama Press, 2024). A scholar of law and religion, Lloyd is now writing about how law and religion construct mothers and motherhood through an interplay between ideas about care and neglect. She is a co-PI for the research project "Critical Perspectives on Care: Social Reproduction Theory in a Global Context."

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Aisha R. Lovens (she/her/hers) is a PhD student in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary. She is a dynamic same-gender-loving minister, scholar-activist, womanist, and preacher committed to transformative theological inquiry. Her research centers on sex rhetoric in Black churches and theological institutions, with a particular emphasis on womanist theology and its liberative possibilities for marginalized communities. Her work seeks to challenge oppressive structures, amplify silenced voices, and foster a more inclusive and embodied understanding of sacred discourse. With a passion for preaching, teaching, and advocacy, she is a visionary leader who brings a depth of insight, intuition, and discernment to her ministry. She is dedicated to empowering communities to engage in critical reflection and bold action and seeks to create spaces for authenticity, healing, and liberation. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Norfolk State University, a Master of Divinity, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.

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Kelsey Hanson Woodruff is a PhD candidate in Religion at Harvard University. Her dissertation is a historical and ethnographic study of digital communities of post-evangelical feminists in the twenty-first century. She is also writing a biography of millennial author Rachel Held Evans. Hanson Woodruff's work has been supported by the Louisville Institute, the SSRC's Religion, Spirituality and Democratic Renewal fellowship, and the Weatherhead Center. Her research and teaching interests include evangelicalism and post-evangelicalism, religion and gender, and religion and American politics.

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Dr Angela Puca is an academic and a university lecturer who has taught at several universities worldwide and has been based at Leeds Trinity University since 2016.

She holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in philosophy. In 2021, The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Religious Studies on Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism, published by Brill. Her research focuses on magic, witchcraft, Paganism, esotericism, shamanism, and related currents.

Author of several peer-reviewed publications and co-editor of the forthcoming 'Pagan Religions in five Minutes' for Equinox, she hopes to bridge the gap between academia and the communities of magic practitioners by delivering related scholarly content on her YouTube Channel and other social media platforms. CONNECT & SUPPORT💖

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Shaonta' Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She also holds affiliations with the African and African American Studies Department and the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality. She received her B.A in Sociology from the University of Washington, her M.A. in Sociology and a graduate certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Middle Tennessee State University, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati. Her scholarship draws on Race, Religion, Social Movements, and Intersectionality literatures to explore how identity markers like religion inform Black political ideology construction. Shaonta's current book project examines the experiences of Black Christian Millennials during Black Lives Matter. Her research has been published in Sociology Compass, Humanity & Society, and Religions.

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Binu 'Ben' Varghese is a PhD student in religion and society at Princeton Theological Seminary. His research focuses on intersections of race, politics, and religion among Indian diasporas in transnational contexts. He draws his theoretical formulations from the colonial history of Dutch slavery in India and alternative readings of Indian American history and memories. In addition to his research project, Binu is also interested in religion and capitalism, and religious nationalisms in India and America. He is currently serving as the editorial assistant of the Journal of World Christianity. His upcoming research essay is titled "Liminality as Decoloniality: Decolonizing Indian American Christianity," which will be published in The Routledge Handbook of Politics and Religion in Contemporary America. We also discuss "Indian Flag at the Capitol Insurrection and ANti blackness among Indian Christians" from the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

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SueJeanne Koh is the Graduate Futures Program Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She develops programming for humanities doctoral students focusing on professional development and diverse career pathways. She is also the Director of Adult Education and Resident Theologian for St. Mark and New Hope Presbyterian Churches (PC(USA)). In this capacity, she creates opportunities for both churches to collaborate on racial justice and other pressing social issues. She has written articles and book chapters on settler colonialism and theology, Asian American theology, as well as co-written a piece on contingent labor with Franklin Tanner Capps (JAAR). With Capps, she is currently working on a book project on Christian nationalism, informed by blood discourses and legal proceedings significant for Asian American racial formation.

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