Director and Publisher
Thomas M. Landy
Thomas M. Landy, a sociologist with a specialization in the sociology of religion and Catholicism, is director of the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. His primary research is in global Catholicism, and he founded and leads research for Catholics & Cultures, a web-based initiative to explore the religious lives and practices of lay Catholics in their particular cultural contexts around the world. He has conducted research in 30 countries and authored nearly 250 articles for the site. He has lectured on more than 50 campuses and at association meetings in the United States, Canada, Hungary, India, Kenya, Poland and the Philippines. For thirty years, Landy served as executive director of Collegium, a colloquy on faith and intellectual life, which he founded in 1992. He is editor of As Leaven for the World: Catholic Reflections on Faith, Vocation, and the Intellectual Life (Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward, 2001), and, with Karen Eifler, Becoming Beholders: Cultivating a Sacramental Imagination in the Classroom (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2014). He holds a PhD in sociology from Boston University, an MDiv from Weston School of Theology, an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago and a BA in history from Fairfield University.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Mathew N. Schmalz
Mathew N. Schmalz is professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. He received his BA from Amherst College and his PhD in history of religions from the University of Chicago. Schmalz has been awarded Century, Watson, Fulbright-Hays, and American Institute of Indian Studies fellowships. He has published over fifty articles and essays that engage global Catholicism (particularly in South Asia), Catholic theology and spirituality, Mormonism, and the Watchtower movement. He is co-editor of Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (SUNY, 2012, with Peter Gottschalk) and author of a memoir: Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life Changing Gift (OSV, 2016). Schmalz also has written over one hundred opinion pieces that have appeared in The Conversation, Newsweek, Salon, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Commonweal, On Faith, Crux, US News & World Report, and the National Catholic Reporter. He has provided expert commentary to the New York Times, USA Today, Good Morning America, NPR, CNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Slate, and the BBC. In addition to being founding editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, he serves on the editorial boards of Asian Horizons, Christian Higher Education, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. He is a grateful husband and father.He also has a large standard poodle, a pot-belly pig, and a gecko.
Managing Editor
Brent Otto, S.J.
Brent Otto, S.J. is a historian of modern South Asia and an eager researcher, writer, and teacher. He specializes in colonial and post-colonial South Asia, with research interests in the social histories of race and caste difference, Indian Christianity, missionaries, and education. With a commitment to interdisciplinary work between social scientists and historians, Brent has engaged in several collaborative research projects that engage the lived religious lives of communities in India, and he co-edits the interdisciplinary mixed-race studies journal, the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. He is a PhD Candidate in the History of South Asia at UC Berkeley, in the final stages of his dissertation. Having graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2001 with a degree in history, Brent pursued a career in secondary school teaching before joining the Jesuits. As a Jesuit, Brent has studied in New York City, London, and Berkeley, CA, researched in India, and ministered in Mexico, Jamaica, Atlanta, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Besides the academic work of research and teaching, Brent finds the ministries of spiritual direction and preaching to be particularly life-giving.
Editorial Board
Bernardo E. Brown
Bernardo E. Brown is associate professor of anthropology at the International Christian University in Tokyo. He works on Catholicism in South Asia, particularly Sri Lanka, with a special focus on seminary training. His work has been recently published in SOJOURN (2020), Religion (2020) and Anthropological Quarterly (2018). With Brenda S.A. Yeoh, he edited Asian Migrants and Religious Experience: From Missionary Journeys to Labor Migration (AUP, 2019). He received a MA from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Cornell University. Before joining ICU, he was Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden.
Michel Chambon
Michel Chambon is a Catholic theologian and cultural anthropologist researching Chinese Christianity. He has lived and conducted research in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. His book Making Christ Present in China, Actor-Network Theory and the Anthropology of Christianity offers an ethnography of the Christian denominations present in a small city of southeast China, Nanping, and theorize the unity and diversity of Christianity. As a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, Asia Research Institute, he coordinates ISAC, the Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics.
Eunice Kamaara
Eunice Kamaara is professor of African Christian ethics at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. She holds a doctorate in African Christian ethics and an M.Sc. in international health research ethics. Her research interest is largely in interpretive methods with interdisciplinary perspectives: ethical, medical, socio-anthropological, theological, and gender approaches to religion and development in contemporary Africa. She is interested in the relationship between ethics and religion/spirituality, on one hand, and, sustainable human development on the other. She is particularly interested in translating research findings into practical development through policy influence and community research uptake. Individually and with others, she has carried out major research projects, published, and implemented the findings. She has presented hundreds of papers in local and international forums and has over 100 publications including books, book chapters, training manuals, refereed journal articles, and reviews. She is a trainer of trainers in research methodology, research ethics and policy, higher education management, as well as in gender studies. She has received several awards and has consulted for national and international organizations including the World Bank, Church World Service, the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Population Fund the World Council of Churches, the Association of African Women in Research and Development, and lately, the Templeton World Charity Foundation Inc., among others. Eunice currently serves on the international Board of Directors of Church World Service toward ending hunger and facilitating global peace and in the Ethics Review Board of Medecines Sans Frotieres.
Magdalena Lubanska
Magdalena Lubanska is an anthropologist of religion and assistant professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. Her main research areas include anthropology of Catholicism in Poland and Ukraine, anthropology of Orthodox Christianity and Islam in post-Ottoman territories, religious (anti)syncretism, sacrificial rites, embodied religion, sensory religious imageries, agency of things, healing practices, material religion, secularization and postsecularism. She is the author of the books: Muslims and Christians in the Bulgarian Rhodopes: Studies on Religious (Anti)syncretism (2015; https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/458709), Popular Soteriology of Muslims (Pomaks) and Orthodox Christians from the Chepelare Region in Bulgaria [in Bulgarian] (Sofia 2005), and the editor of the book Religious Life of Eastern Rite Christians on Polish-Ukrainian Borderland [in polish] (Warsaw 2007). Her articles were published in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristis, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, Ethnologia Balkanica, Slavia Meridionalis, Lud and Ethnologia Polona. She was the principal investigator in the prestigious research grant "Sonata" form the National Science Centre in Poland entitled: Anthropological Theories and Social-Religious Life of Orthodox Believers in Local Communities of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. Working Group: Centre for Anthropological Studies on Orthodox Christianity (2012-2016) and currently she is the principal investigator in another National Science Centre project Multisensory Religious Imageries in Selected Catholic Shrines in South-Eastern Poland (2014-2017). Recently she found her passion in making creative ethnographic documentary movies.
Kerry P. C. San Chirico
Kerry P. C. San Chirico is assistant professor of interfaith and interreligious studies at Villanova University. Born and raised in Monterey, California, he holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Santa Clara University, and masters degrees from Princeton Seminary, Rutgers University, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and Boston College. He holds a doctorate in religious studies (South Asian religions) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. With expertise in Indian religions and global Christianities, his scholarly interests include South Asian bhakti, vernacular Hinduisms, inter-religious interaction and exchange, and theory and method in the study of religion. Recent publications include the chapter “Religion in the Practice of Daily Life in India” in the multi-volume series Religion and Everyday Life and Culture (Praeger, 2010) and “Between Christian and Hindu: Khrist Bhaktas, Catholics, and the Negotiation of Devotion in the Banaras Region” in Constructing Indian Christianities (Routledge India, 2014). He is co-editor of the forthcoming book Hagiography and Religious Truth (Bloomsbury), which explores sanctity across religious traditions. Currently the Secretary of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies, San Chirico resides in Narberth, Pennsylvania with his wife and three daughters.
Bernhard Udelhoven
Bernhard Udelhoven, born 1968 in Trier, Germany, is a Catholic priest (ordained in 1996) and a member of the Society of the Missionaries of Africa. He has lived in Zambia since 1989, working in the Luapula Province, the Luangwa Valley and in Lusaka. He studied theology (Trier: 1987-1989 and London: 1992-1996) and social anthropology (London: 2002-2003). Presently he works in St. Lawrence Parish, Misisi Compound, Lusaka. He has written about Zambian interpretations of dreams and prophecies, challenges to the Christian faith in the Luangwa Valley, the history of the Bena Kabende in the Luapula Province, and the changing face of the Christian landscape in Bauleni Compound/ Lusaka. He is author of Unseen Worlds: Dealing with Spirits, Witchcraft, and Satanism (Lusaka: FENZA Publications, 2016) and co-author with Gotthard Roser and Patrick Mumbi of Dreams: Where Do Biblical, Zambian and Western Approach Meet? (Lusaka: FENZA Publications, 2013). Both publications are available at http://www.fenza.org/publications.html.
Designer
Sarah Potter
Sarah Potter is the Assistant Director for Communications at the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. She received her BA in anthropology and art history at Connecticut College. She started her career at ActBlue, a nonprofit fundraising platform headquartered in Somerville, MA. Starting in 2023, Sarah manages web content and event marketing for the McFarland Center. She also serves as the website manager for the Catholics and Cultures initiative. A Worcester native, she currently resides near the College with her partner and two cats.