Alina Kokoschka is a researcher in Islamic studies, specializing in the aesthetics of Islamization, with a focus on the material worlds of Islam and Arabic script in the digital space. She also has interest in the relationship between people and things as well as criticism of representations of Islam and “Islamic art.”

Kaitlyn Ugoretz is an anthropologist of religion and the associate editor of publications at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, including the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. Ugoretz specializes in contemporary Japanese religion, globalization, technology and media. Her digital ethnographic research focuses on the globalization of Shinto and the development of transnational online Shinto communities.

Sam Kestenbaum is a journalist covering religion in America. He has written about religious life during and in response to the pandemic, including a profile of Clay Clark, the frontman of a prophecy-and-politics roadshow; New Age author Christiane Northrup’s conspiracy makeover; a faith-healing TikToker whose fandom grew during lockdown months; and a Pentecostal church that […]

James S. Bielo is associate professor in the department of religious studies at Northwestern University. He specializes in the anthropological study of religion, Christianity, American religion and the study of material religion.

Emily D. Crews is the executive director of the Marty Center at the University of Chicago. Crews is a scholar of Christianities in Africa and the United States. Her scholarly research explores the ways that people’s religious lives are connected to their ideas about gender, race and the body. She is especially interested in how […]

Jacqueline Fewkes is an anthropology professor at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University.  She is a cultural anthropologist who has conducted research in many parts of the world, including India, Indonesia, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Recently, she led the American Mosques Project, a study of mosques in the […]

Sergio M. González is Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University. A historian of twentieth-century U.S. migration, labor, and religion, his scholarship focuses on the development of Latino communities in the U.S. Midwest. He is the author of Mexicans in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017) and the co-editor of Faith and Power: Latino Religious […]

Kelly Ryan is president of Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, which operates in 58 countries, serving refugees and other forcibly displaced persons in conflict zones and detention centers, on remote borders and in busy cities. Ryan is also a board member of the Inter-American Foundation and former adviser to the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. […]

Chelsea Sobolik is a writer based in Washington, D.C., where she is also director of government relations at World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization and the largest evangelical refugee resettlement in the U.S.