Biography
Lora Walsh is an Associate Professor at the University of Arkansas. She earned her PhD in religious studies at Northwestern University. Lora’s book, Lady Church in the Christian Imagination: From Early Christianity to Early Modernity, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2026. Her articles on religion, literature, and gender have appeared in venues such as Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Harvard Theological Review. Lora has completed the three-year leadership cycle from Vice President through President of AAR’s Southwest region. She has also served on the steering committees of two AAR program units: Religion in Premodern Europe and the Mediterranean (as co-chair) and Comparative Studies in Religion.
Candidate Statement
The AAR annual meeting is a great place to catch up with grad school peers and to make professional contacts. But the AAR Southwest regional meeting is where I made genuine new friends.
I am running for the Regions Director position to strengthen the valuable role of regions in the ecosystem of AAR. As a complement to AAR’s year-round programming and annual virtual and in-person meetings, regional activities provide an accessible and humanizing entry-point to AAR for scholars of religion from multiple institutional settings.
As President of AAR’s Southwest region, I worked to simplify our conference proposal and review process. I also created lower-stakes session formats, like book club-style panels and “Meet My Monograph: In Print or In Progress” sessions that brought transparency to the publication process and visibility to scholars in our region. I extended personal invitations to scholars in our region to share their work in ways that moved their projects forward and celebrated their recent achievements.
I would bring this emphasis on lightening workloads and cultivating humane relationships to the role of Regions Director. My top priorities would be:
-Listening to leaders of each region to hear their concerns and aspirations.
-Reducing the labor involved in regional conference processes and session formats.
-Amplifying voices from regions that are underrepresented in the larger AAR.
The AAR Southwest regional meeting was the only conference I attended during my years of alt-ac and contingent faculty employment. The region provided support and opportunity at a critical stage in my career as a scholar and teacher. I continue to rely on friends and colleagues I meet at regional meetings, especially since I am the lone religious studies scholar at my institution.
Less labor. More humane relationships. Regions can help.