a bit about me.
I joined the Religion Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as an Assistant Professor in 2023. My research and teaching interests include social ethics, religion & politics in the US, political theology, moral formation, complicity and responsibility, and structural injustice. I am especially interested in moral and political questions concerning schools, families, and prisons.
I am currently working on several projects related to religion and democratic formation in public schools and contemporary racial school segregation.
my work around incarceration.
The vast expansion of the prison-industrial complex has meant that along with half of Americans, I have immediate family members who have experienced incarceration. During my Ph.D. program, I managed an inside-outside certificate program where students from the community joined students incarcerated at Garden State Correctional Facility to learn together.
At UIUC, I am a member of the Advisory Council for the Education Justice Project (EJP). EJP is a vibrant community of incarcerated students, educators, formerly incarcerated individuals, and others who are committed to a more just and humane world. We believe that providing quality post-secondary education within prisons is but one important step towards that vision.
I teach “Crime, Punishment, and Redemption in America” at the University of Illinois. Over the past few years, students in this course have generated pubic facing projects, including book reviews and podcasts. Click the link below to see what they’ve been up to!