Jacob Leal
Jacob Leal, a PhD candidate in Constructive Theology at Boston University, is a Texas-born Mexican-American whose research is influenced by ancestral veneration of what remains in the afterlife of colonial trauma, in both Mexican culture and Mexican people. Leal holds an MTS from Duke University Divinity School and a BA from Vanguard University of Southern California. Rooted in precolonial Indigenous cultures and how Indigenous ancestors haunt structures of coloniality, his interest in Mexican ancestral understandings seeks to offer important contributions to Constructive Theology. Leal’s research employs liberation theologies, decolonial theory, and trauma studies to explore the continuing presence of our ancestors. As such, the influence of his abuela‘s stories of visitations from deceased loved ones is a force toward his precolonial understanding of time, space, and death. Leal hopes to expose negative Western labels of ancestral visitations, which deem interactions with the dead taboo. His passion for theological research and training simultaneously realizes the importance of creating inclusive academic spaces and opportunities for Latines and marginalized voices, like his abuela, to tell their stories.
