Presidential WebinAAR: Applied Religious Studies – What, How, Why?

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Panelists

Andrew Ali Aghapour, PhD, is a scholar, storyteller, writer, and artistic producer living in Durham, NC. Andrew was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina by a Muslim, Iranian father and a Christian, British mother. Andrew’s search to understand his own identity led him to study religion and science. Andrew received a Masters and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill. He went on to work as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, where he helped develop the “Discovery and Revelation,” exhibition and co-author the exhibit book. As a freelance writer and editor, Andrew has covered stories about religion and science for outlets including Slate, On Being, Religion Dispatches, and the Revealer. He was the co-founder, with Michael Schulson, of The Cubit, the managing editor of Harvard Divinity School’s Cosmologics magazine, and a consulting producer for the Ministry of Ideas podcast’s Illuminations series.

Justine Ellis, PhD, is Associate Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life at Columbia University and a Lecturer in the Department of Religion. She oversees IRCPL’s operations, including its programming, partnerships, grant-making portfolio, and public humanities work. Her research focuses on the intersection of religion, secularism, and public policy. Justine’s past professional experiences include leading educational and outreach initiatives in higher education, non-profit, and policy contexts. Immediately prior to joining IRCPL, Justine served as a senior advisor to a DC-based government ethics nonprofit and was an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) postdoctoral Leading Edge Fellow. She holds a doctorate in Theology and Religion from the University of Oxford and has published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, and the Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds. Justine’s first book, The Politics of Religious Literacy: Education and Emotion in a Secular Age, examines the changing dynamics of religion and secularism in public life.

Tia Noelle Pratt, PhD, is a higher education professional, researcher, and inclusion & diversity specialist based in Philadelphia, PA. She received her PhD in sociology from Fordham University in 2010. A sociologist of religion by training, she is an expert in systemic racism with twenty-five years of experience researching and writing about how systemic racism impacts African-American. She is also the President and Director of Research at TNPratt & Associates, LLC. Her latest book, Black and Catholic: Racism, Identity, and Religion (Notre Dame Press, 2025), documents the exclusion, erasure, and systematic racism faced by Black Catholics, filling an essential gap in both Catholic and Black history.

Daniel Sack, PhD, is Deputy Director of the Division of Research Programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a historian of American religion with a PhD in religious studies from Princeton University. He has taught or been an administrator for the University of Chicago, Hope College, Columbia Theological Seminary, and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. He is the author of Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture (2000) and Moral Re-Armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement (2009). He is working on two projects—on religion in the Great Depression and on airport chapels as sacred space. 

Moderator

SueJeanne Koh, ThD, a second-generation Korean American who grew up in the Philly suburbs, and lived in Boston, MA, Princeton, NJ, Durham, NC, and Baltimore, MD for work and education. I’m a relatively recent SoCal transplant. I work as a research administrator at UC Irvine’s Humanities Center, collaborating with humanities PhD students, faculty, and staff on research and career pathways. I am also the associate pastor for Christian Formation and Public Engagement at St. Mark Presbyterian Church (PC(USA)). My research interests broadly fall within the growing field of political theology. I particularly focus on how Protestant theologies intersect with race and structures of settler colonialism, and more specifically on Asian American racialization and Reformed theologies. I am also interested in questions of graduate education and generative AI.