Carpenter Cohort: August Intensive
In 2025, Sacred Writes has received a second round of funding from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation to hold public scholarship trainings for scholars focused on religion, gender, and sexuality. Please welcome the scholars accepted to the August Intensive!
Deirdre Jonese Austin
duke University
Deirdre Jonese Austin (she/her) is a writer, womanist minister, and Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer raised in the South and in the Protestant Church. Her work, ministry, and research develop out of her own experience and explore topics at the intersection of faith, race, gender and sexuality, and justice. Jonese has a Master of Divinity degree from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She is currently a PhD candidate at Duke University in Cultural Anthropology, pursuing certificates in Feminist and African and African American Studies. Her doctoral project explores how Black women dancers in the U.S. South cultivate the sacred in their relationships with their own bodies and sexualities, the divine, and other dancers, at Black churches and at pole-dance and fitness studios.
Jaquan Beachem
University of connecticut
JaQuan Beachem (he/they) is a Divinely-inspired interdisciplinary artist-educator-advocate! While pursuing their doctorate at the University of Connecticut, JaQuan serves as the Associate Dean for Community Development and Spiritual Formation at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. Their scholarship bridges the fields of education, religion, and queer studies. At these intersections, JaQuan's work engages embodiment, experiential learning, eco theology, ephemera, and ethics of care. They hold a BA from Bard College and an M.Div from Yale University. Ordained in the United Church of Christ, JaQuan practices ministry that is love-centered, joy-seeking, holistic, and justice-oriented. In their leisure, JaQuan enjoys jamming out to music, honing their yoga practice, trying out a new recipe, and noticing things bloom.
Judith Bishop
Mills College at Northeastern University
Judith L. Bishop is Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Alice Andrews Quigley Chair in Women’s Studies at Mills College at Northeastern University. She earned her BA from Baylor University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. Her research interests include: women in world religions; theoretical approaches to gender, body, and sexuality; and religion in public discourse.
Emilie Casey
Emory Univeristy
Emilie Casey is a PhD candidate in Emory University’s Graduate Division of Religion. Her dissertation examines the racial and sexual politics that shaped twentieth-century Protestant approaches to spiritual care, drawing on the archives of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (1920s–1950s). She critically historicizes the emergence of pastoral psychology within the broader landscape of American religious thought and institutional life, tracing how ministerial practices became entangled with systems of classification, surveillance, and Protestant therapeutic authority. Her research contributes to contemporary conversations on mental health, spirituality, and the historical ties between carceral logics and theologies of healing. Emilie regularly teaches introductory courses in Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma and Church History at Saint Paul School of Theology.
Bridget Hadorn
Boston College
Bridget Hadorn (she/her) has a BA in Christian Ministries from Gordon College, and is a current graduate student at the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry, where she is pursuing a Masters of Theological Studies. Bridget’s primary research interest is the intersection of thanatology and ecclesiology, or how grief and loss intersect with experiences of faith communities, and especially LGBTQ+ experiences of church loss. For the past 5 years, Bridget’s professional career has been primarily in youth ministry and religious education with middle and high schoolers, alongside a lot of pet sitting. In her free time, she is a volunteer hospice worker, writes for her Substack (@sacredgrief) and enjoys crocheting, reading, watching KDramas, and learning Japanese.
Aysha Hidayatullah
University of San Francisco
Aysha Hidayatullah is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco, and she teaches undergraduate courses on gender, sexuality, race, ethics, and religious studies in Islamic traditions. She began teaching at USF in 2008, after receiving her MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her BA in Women's Studies and English from Emory University. She is the author of Feminist Edges of the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 2014), a study of feminist exegesis of the Qur'an. Her forthcoming book, This Body Called Muslim, is a study of Islamic ritual practices in relation to the body. Her other publications and research interests span constructions of gender and sexuality in Islamic traditions; literary representations and self-representations of Muslims in relation to gender; constructive Muslim theology; and methodologies and epistemologies in the study of Islam.
alaa Murad
Hobart and william smith college
Alaa Murad is a historian of the Middle East, Islam, and interreligious relations. She holds an MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and a PhD in History from Brandeis University. Her current research focuses on the use of 19th-century Arabic historical novels to popularize and shape the study of Islamic history across a wide spectrum of religious identities and political ideologies. Starting this August 2025, Murad is Visiting Assistant Professor in Asian Studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, teaching Arabic language and literature, and Ottoman history. In addition to teaching and research, she is also exploring ways to connect her scholarship to book arts, binding, and restoration.
Theophilus Tinashe Nenjerama
Emory University
Theophilus Tinashe Nenjerama is a PhD student in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. His research engages the intersection of queer subjectivities and fundamentalist religio-political formations, exploring how queer communities enact self-affirmation and resistance. Grounded in postcolonial theory, his work advocates for a reconceptualization of queer rights as human rights and interrogates the category of the ‘human’ as shaped by religious, political, and sociogenetic forces. Prior to his doctoral studies, he obtained an MDiv and an MA in Practical Theology at Columbia Theological Seminary, taught high school in Zimbabwe, and worked with Global Ministries in Ireland, where he led arts-based intercultural advocacy initiatives with migrant communities, drawing on his training in theatre performance.
Dalia Obidat
university of bonn
Dalia Obidat is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies and Digital Humanities at the University of Bonn in Germany, and a researcher affiliated with the Forum Internationale Wissenschaft. With an academic background in English Linguistics, Cultural Studies, and Mass Communication, her research bridges multiple disciplines to explore the intersection of atheism, digital communities, and sexual identity in the Arab world. She examines how ex-Muslims and Arab atheists navigate desire and religiosity through online platforms, drawing on feminist theory, queer theory, intersectionality, and the politics of desire to understand their experiences within layered systems of social, cultural, and religious constraint. Her work combines digital ethnography and discourse analysis to investigate how identity and belief are negotiated in secular digital spaces. She contributes to broader discussions on secularism, embodiment, and agency in digitally mediated and culturally restrictive environments across the Middle East and North Africa.
Azna ParveeN Palakka Palliyali
university of manchester
Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India. Trained in architecture with a specialisation in Urban Design, she has previously worked as an architect and an academician. She was also part of a multidisciplinary team awarded a grant by India Foundation for Art to study the spatial and sensorial landscape of Kayalpattinam. Beyond academia, she is a published illustrator and storyteller, leading heritage walks independently and with organisations (past collaborators include Kochi-Muziris Biennale) to encourage inclusive and interdisciplinary conversations about architectural and urban histories and sustainable futures for heritage.
Meera Trivedi
university of sheffield
Meera Trivedi is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield in the School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities. Her research focuses the religious lives of women in early nineteenth century Gujarat, India. She explores how these women navigated profound social, cultural, and political shifts through their religious beliefs and identities. Through ethnohistorical work she uncovers how conceptions of womanhood were altered, social boundaries were challenged, and how the stories of these women hold significance in religious practice today.
LJ Williams
Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association
LJ Williams (they/she) is a queer African and Jewish ritualist and writer, pursuing an MDiv from Starr King School for The Ministry with a certificate in Entheogenic Justice Companioning. They are a longtime Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism community member, and served as a coordinator of a Chicago BLUUHaven. They were a Worship Learning Fellow at the Church of Larger Fellowship (2021-2023) and she received a B.A. from University of Illinois in Global Studies and Environmental Sustainability. She currently serves as board president of Young Adult Revival Network. She is interested in the intersections of land, religion, and revolutionary movements, embodied ritual and queer bodies. She loves arts, science fiction, and her family.