Dr. Marlene Mayra Ferreras is assistant professor of practical theology at the HMS Richards Divinity School at La Sierra University (2017), where she also received BA degrees in Religious Studies and Spanish (2003). Dr. Ferreras’ academic interests intersect social science and theology. She studies the strategies women use to resist systems of violence and oppression for the purpose of providing spiritual care that assists women in identifying and developing preferred futures. Her research on decolonial approaches in care and counseling with working-class Latinx women focuses on the identity and eschatology of Indigenous female maquila workers in Yucatan, Mexico. Dr. Ferreras’ recent book Insurrectionist Wisdoms: Toward a North American Indigenized Pastoral Theology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) won the 2023 national HTI Book Prize. Awards granted also include the Wills and Dorothy Fisher Award (Claremont School of Theology, 2018), the Forum for Theological Exploration Doctoral Fellowships (2015, 2017) and a HTI Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (Princeton, 2017). She holds a PhD in practical theology: spiritually integrative psychotherapy from Claremont School of Theology (2019). Her two MA degrees in theology are from Claremont School of Theology (2019) and Fuller Theological Seminary (2012), with an emphasis in biblical studies. She also received an MS in Marital and Family Therapy from Loma Linda University (2011). The daughter of a Cuban refugee single-mother, Dr. Ferreras was born and raised in southern California. She is an ordained Seventh-day Adventist minister with fourteen years experience in pastoral ministry, serving communities around Loma Linda, California, as well as a registered associate marriage and family therapist with the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

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.

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections: the eaters of flowers (Saddle Road Press, 2024); FirstPoems (Flowersong Press, 2021); CUICACALLI/House of Song (Saddle Road Press, 2019); Blood Sugar Canto (Saddle Road Press, 2016); and furia (Mouthfeel Press, 2010). Her two chapbooks are Hibiscus Tacos (Alabrava Press, 2021) and Enduring Azucares (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). ire’ne recently released her first comic book, VENDAVAL (Chispa Imprint of Scout Comics, 2024). She is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Her short story collection, flesh to bone (Aunt Lute Books, 2013), won the Premio Aztlán and the short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in spring 2025. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine.

Anthony Trujillo is a member of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, one of the six Tewa-speaking pueblos in the upper Rio Grande Valley. As a PhD candidate in American Studies at Harvard University, Trujillo works at the confluence of Native American and Indigenous Studies, history, religious studies, anthropology, and the arts. His research attunes to the bio/geo-graphic manifestations of Indigenous engagement with – and resistance to – colonial/imperial religious, political, and economic systems, largely in the context of 18th and 19th century North America, but also draws connections with contemporary Native nations and descendent communities. From a political and geographic angle, Trujillo seeks to discern the competing sources and configurations of sovereignty. He is also keenly interested in how creative expression—music, visual art, oratory, and literature—become vital avenues through which Indigenous peoples and people of color can move beyond constraints placed on their bodies, form intimate relationships of exchange among diverse communities, and maintain spaces and practices of belonging. Trujillo’s revitalizing practices include music, photography, writing, deserts, forests, bodies of water, the night sky, and cooking. He received an MA in History from Harvard University (2023), an MDiv from Yale University (2019), and a BA in Music Performance from Seattle Pacific University (2002).

Rebecca Mendoza Nunziato is a Xicana, born and raised in Colorado. Mendoza is the daughter and descendant of Mexican migrant farm workers and white settler ranchers. She is a doctoral student in the Committee for the Study of Religion at Harvard University with a focus on Latin American and Caribbean traditions, and a 2023 Ford PreDoctoral Fellow. Mendoza’s scholarship centers Indigenous philosophy, material religion, and ritual survivance pertaining to kinship among humans, plants, animals, ancestors, ancestral belongings, and land. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges ancient Mesoamerican materials and cosmovision with critical theory from Indigenous, Mexican, and Chicanx communities. She was a 2022 Summer Pre-Columbian Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks and a Graduate Student Associate at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Mendoza is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School (MDiv, 2023) and the University of Oregon (2014) with honors and bachelor degrees in Political Science and Spanish. In addition to her academic research, she has professional experience working in community organizing, advocacy, education, and storytelling.

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, 2024), her debut memoir. Prasad has been named a finalist for both the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writing Series. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Guernica, Literary Hub, Catapult, KHÔRA, and elsewhere. She is a member of The Writers Grotto and Seventeen Syllables, an Asian American Pacific Islanders writers collective. Prasad lives in the Bay Area.

Dr. Raúl Zegarra is an Assistant Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School and a member of the editorial and advisory team at the Hispanic Theological Initiative. Dr. Zegarra has held previous positions at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD from The University of Chicago and holds master’s degrees in philosophy and theology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the University of Notre Dame, respectively. His research focuses on the relationship between faith and politics, with particular emphasis on how the identity and commitments of minoritized groups are shaped. Awards recently granted include the New Scholar Essay Prize for Catholic Studies in the Americas (Fordham University, 2023), the Max Weber Kolleg Research Fellowship (University of Erfurt, 2022), and the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (University of Heidelberg, 2021). Dr. Zegarra has authored four books, multiple book chapters, academic articles, and translations. His most recent book, A Revolutionary Faith: Liberation Theology between Public Religion and Public Reason (Stanford UP, 2023), highlights liberation theology’s contributions to a theory of social justice that welcomes the role of religious commitments. His current book project — Sacred Identities: Latines and the Intersectional Politics of Faith — attempts to problematize some of the assumptions of Latine theology regarding the relationship between race, gender, and religion in the Latine community. Dr. Zegarra is a regular op-ed contributor to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio.

Amirah Orozco is a theology doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame in the area of Systematic Theology, with a minor in Gender Studies. She is also a Doctoral Student Affiliate with the Kellogg Institute of International Affairs. Her interests center on mujerista and feminista latine thought as well as Catholic ecclesiology. Orozco’s scholarship pursues liberation and emancipation of the poor and marginalized, focusing on decolonial theologies and feminist movements in the Catholic Church. Her work is anchored in how social movements relate outside of the Church and why those relationships are important to understanding the role of the Church in public life. Orozco originates from the Border between El Paso,Texas and Juárez, Chihuahua, has worked with Latine immigrants in Boston and Chicago, and conducted research in Zacatecas about the legacy of San Luis Batiz Saenz and Mexico’s post-revolutionary church-state relations. She holds a Master's of Theological Studies from Boston College School of Theology and Ministry (2021) and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Boston College (2019).

María Amantina Durán immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s. She and her husband Natalio Durán planted roots in Williamsburg (“Los Sures”), Brooklyn, where they began attending Transfiguration Parish. She went on to become a community activist and a leader in the Fraternidad Jesús de Nazaret, a chapter of the international Lay Fraternity of Charles de Foucauld, which helps parishioners meet regularly outside of Mass and strengthen their faith in God and connection with the community. With two daughters in college, she studied English at Solidaridad Humana, a school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Durán volunteered at the Nuestros Niños Day Care Center in Williamsburg for 20 years and became officially employed as an Educational Aide for 13 years. Her testimonios are documented in various archival resources, including a 1989 oral history recording by the Brooklyn Historical Society as part of its Hispanic Communities Documentation Project. In the early 90s, she organized the first event to feature Dominican folk music, food, and knitting at the central Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. She has also shared her experience on the New Yorkers for Parks Lots to Grow podcast and in Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Nicole P. Marwell. Durán is a member of La Casita Verde community garden in Williamsburg and a founding member of Fundación Hijos de Loma Prieta, a Facebook page dedicated to the Loma Prieta community in Santiago, Dominican Republic. A proud wife and mother of five children and three grandchildren, Durán continues attending Mass at Transfiguration Parish and is involved in several charitable works in New York City and in her native country, for which she has received several City Council citations, proclamations, and awards. 

Jesús Rafael Jiménez was born in San José de Guanipa, Anzoátegui State, Venezuela. He works as an Accounting Technician and Social Promoter. Currently, he is Coordinator of Social Programs at the Buenaventura Catholic Parish in the City of San Félix, Bolívar State, Venezuela. In 2023, he was part of the Venezuelan delegation to the Continental Meeting of the Continental Meeting of the Secular Fraternity of Saint Charles De Foucauld América in Medellín, Colombia.

Dr. Maria Liu Wong is the Provost of City Seminary of New York. Dr. Liu Wong has also served as their Dean and currently directs the Faith and Families initiative, the Walls-Ortiz Gallery and co-directs the Ministry in the City HUB, a national learning network. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Theological Education Between the Times project and Research Scholar with the LearnLong Institute for Education and Learning Research. Her research interests include lifelong and transformative learning, learning cities, mentoring, action research, women and leadership, diversity, place and arts-based pedagogies, youth and urban theological education. Dr. Liu Wong holds an EdD in Adult Learning and Leadership (AEGIS) from Columbia University Teachers College, an MA in Urban Mission from Westminster Theological Seminary, an MA in International Educational Development from Columbia University Teachers College and a BA in English/Environmental Science from Barnard College. She is the author of On Becoming Wise Together: Learning and Leading in the City (Eerdmans, 2023), part of the Theological Education Between the Times series, and has co-authored Stay in the City: How Christian Faith Is Flourishing in an Urban World (Eerdmans, 2017) and the forthcoming companion Sense the City. Dr. Liu Wong is a member and fellowship group leader at Redeemer Presbyterian Church Downtown in New York.

Dr. Javier Viera is the President (2021) and Professor of Education and Leadership at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dr. Viera is the first person of color to hold the office of president in the seminary’s 168-year history. He has served as Dean, Provost and Professor of Pastoral Studies at Drew University Theological Seminary; as executive minister of Christ Church in New York City; and as chair of his local Human Rights Commission. He is an ordained elder in the New York Conference of The United Methodist Church. Other professional activities include the Wabash Center Advisory Committee, the University Senate and Commission on Theological Education of The United Methodist Church, the Religious Education Association, and the American Academy of Religion. His scholarly interests center on inter-religious dialogue and how learning occurs across religious and ideological differences; adult learning and development, particularly Freirean dialectics and pedagogy; and the history of Latin America, particularly revolutionary and anti-colonial movements in the Hispanic Caribbean. Dr. Viera holds a PhD in Education from Columbia University Teachers College, an STM from Yale University, an MDiv from Duke University, and a BA from Florida Southern College. In 2020, he received the Yale Divinity School Distinction in Theological Education award and is currently completing a PhD in Latin American studies/history from the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico.

Dr. Alejandro Nava is a Professor of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona (UA). He received his MA and PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago. His first teaching position was at Seattle University, before joining the faculty at UA, where he teaches courses that include 'Love and World Religions,' 'The Question of God,' 'Religion and Culture in the Southwest,' 'Rap, Culture, and God' and 'Religion in Latin America.' Dr. Nava is the author of The Mystical and Prophetic Thought of Simone Weil and Gustavo Gutiérrez: Reflections on the Mystery and Hiddenness of God (SUNY Press, 2001); Wonder and Exile in the New World (Penn State University Press, 2013); In Search of Soul: Hip-Hop, Literature and Religion (University of California Press, 2017); and Street Scriptures: Between God and Hip-Hop (University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Dr. Luis G. Pedraja is President of Quinsigamond Community College (QCC). He was born in Cuba, and throughout his career, has focused on Latino perspectives, and has published many books and articles exploring how understanding language and culture can promote intercultural dialogue and tolerance. He holds a BA from Stetson University and a PhD in Philosophy and Religion from the University of Virginia. He has been on faculty at the University of Puget Sound and Southern Methodist University, where he also served as a division chair and faculty senator. Additionally, he served as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean at the Memphis Theological Seminary and as Vice President for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. He also led the first program to grant American accreditation to foreign universities and has provided guidance to universities in South America, Asia, and Europe on achieving American higher education standards. Additionally, he has served as Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Antioch University in Los Angeles and Interim Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs for Peralta Community College District in California. Dr. Pedraja serves on multiple boards in the region, the state, and the nation, including: United Way, Latino Education Institute, Masshire Central Region Workforce Board, Worcester Regional Research Bureau, and Co-Chair of the Mayoral Commission for Latino Advancement and Education. He was recently appointed to represent the Massachusetts community colleges in the Governor’s newly formed Healthcare Collaborative and serves on the American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) Commission on Institutional Infrastructure & Technology. Dr. Pedraja lives in Worcester with his wife and daughter.

Gene Fowler is a writer-performer based in Texas. Born into a Dallas showbiz family in 1950, he began performing and writing for theater during the Lyndon Johnson administration. His professional appearances include the White Elephant Saloon (Fort Worth), Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), the San Antonio Rodeo, Downtown Center for the Arts (Albuquerque), the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Nashville Network. He has written on such subjects as the excavation of a 17th-century French shipwreck on the Texas coast, Ernest Tubb, and rattlesnake folk medicine for Texas Highways, True West, Southwest Contemporary and numerous other publications. In addition to Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (with Bill Craford; Texas Monthly Press, 1987), his books include Crazy Water: The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas Health Resorts (Texas Christian University Press, 1991); Mystic Healers & Medicine Shows: Blazing Trails to Wellness in the Old West and Beyond (Ancient City Press, 1997); Glen Rose, Texas (Somervell County Historical Commission, 2002); Mavericks: A Gallery of Texas Characters (University of Texas Press, 2008); and Metro Music – Celebrating a Century of the Trinity River Groove (TCU Press, 2021). See his illustrated talk, “Diamond King Medicine Show,” on YouTube.

Dr. Theresa L. Torres, a second-generation Mexican American, is Associate Professor of Sociology and Race, Ethnic and Gender Studies (REGS) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). Her areas of expertise are Latinx Studies (in the United States, particularly Kansas City), Gender Studies, Immigration Studies, Ethnic Studies, Religious Studies, and Anthropology. Using ethnographic field studies, her current research is on the impact of religion and spirituality in the lives of Latina Leaders and the role of Latinas in religious and civic organizations. She holds a BA in Secondary Education from Benedictine College; an MA in Pastoral Studies in Mexican American Culture and Theology from Boston College; and a PhD in Religious Studies, Theology, and cognate in Anthropology and Latino Studies from Catholic University. Dr. Torres is the author of The Paradox of Latina Religious Leadership in the Catholic Church: Las Guadalupanas of Kansas City (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), a book on Latina spirituality and resilience based on interviews of Latina leaders. 

Dr. Theresa A. Yugar is a Peruvian American scholar in religion whose scholarly focus is on women, ecology, and climate change on a global level. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a master’s degree in Feminist Theology and has a PhD from Claremont Graduate University in the field of Women Studies in Religion. Her research interests include creating counter narratives in course curriculum, reclaiming the native indigenous cosmology within a Buen Vivir ecological framework, reimagining Andean colonial frameworks, and reflecting on 17th century Novohispaña Latina woman Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in a contemporary U.S. context. 

Dr. Yugar is the Chief Editor for the book, Valuing Lives, Healing Earth: Religion, Gender, and Life on Earth (Peeters, Belgium, 2021), which focuses on women who embody commitments to healing the earth rendered vulnerable by problematic social systems in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. She is also the author of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Feminist Reconstruction of Biography and Text (Wipf and Stock, 2014). She is the scriptwriter for the TED-Ed Lessons Worth Sharing "History’s Worst Nun," which has been viewed nine million times since its publication in November 2019. Dr. Yugar has also been recognized by The Peruvian Consulate, in Lima, with a diploma for organizing the Santo Niño de la Mascaipacha (Holy Child of Cuzco) cultural event at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, in Los Angeles, which reclaims the “ancestral cult of the Peruvian Andes.”

Bill Crawford was born in New York City and attended the prep school Phillips Academy, Andover, and Harvard, where he received his undergraduate degree in the Comparative Study of Religion. He also earned an MBA in management from the University of Texas - Austin and worked briefly in the oil industry. For more than thirty years, Crawford lived in Austin, Texas where he worked as a media producer, writer, ghost writer and editor. He is a frequent contributor to the Austin Chronicle, Texas Monthly, and a number of other publications. Crawford has written or co-written more than a dozen books, including The United States Border Patrol (Putnam, 1965); Border Radio: Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves (with Gene Fowler; Texas Monthly Press, 1987); Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire (with Joe Nick Patoski; Little, Brown, 1993); Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal (with Scott Bruce; Faber & Faber, 1995); Texas Death Row: Executions in the Modern Era (Longstreet Press, 2000); Austin: A Pictorial History (American Historical Press, 2001); All American: The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe (Wiley, 2003); and Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy (University of Texas Press, 2004). Several of his books have been optioned by the film industry. He has also ghost written or edited more than three dozen other publications, including memoirs, business histories, and self-help books. Crawford is the creator of The Dad Show, a talk-radio show for parents that ran for fifteen years on Austin radio and was funded by Child Incorporated, a manager of Head Start programs. Additionally, he spent five years working as a volunteer court-appointed special advocate for children in foster care with the organization CASA of Travis County. He worked on The Texas Quiz Show, a game show about Texas history for seventh-grade students who take Texas history in school. Crawford has also appeared as a humorous commentator on Fox News Channel, Fox and Friends, MSNBC, and C-SPAN, as well as Westwood I radio networks and dozens of other radio stations across the country. Crawford currently lives in a small town in Nuevo León, Mexico, where he writes creative non-fiction, swims, rides his bike, and drinks tequila.

The grandson of agricultural workers and day laborers, Danny Ballon-Garst was born and raised in San Diego, California, along the San Ysidro/Tijuana border, where his dad pastored an Apostolic church. As a scholar, Ballon-Garst is interested in studying the relationship between religion and social change, and he pursues his research questions primarily through a historical lens. In his doctoral studies, Ballon-Garst is conducting a historical study of black and brown queer Pentecostals and Evangelicals in the United States in the twentieth century, drawing connections from these historical movements and actors to current queer religious movements, including queer transnational religious movements in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, he practiced law at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and at a corporate law firm in Los Angeles. Ballon-Garst holds BA and JD degrees from the University of Southern California, and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School.

Rebecca Rhodes Blackburn is a PhD student in Biblical Hermeneutics at Chicago Theological Seminary. Her research centers contemporary hermeneutical strategies in biblical studies, including womanist, queer, mujerista, and feminist approaches. Blackburn cultivates tools for self-critical engagement of the biblical text in historically centered Christian communities. In addition to her research, she is involved in various projects related to interreligious dialogue and cooperation. She currently serves as a fellow for the Tri-Faith Initiative’s inaugural Emerging Clergy Seminar. Before her PhD work, Blackburn worked in higher education, promoting student success and community thriving. She has experience teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Blackburn holds a Bachelor’s in social work and a Master’s in spiritual formation and leadership; these degrees work together to keep her attuned to strategies that support the material, social, and spiritual conditions of the communities to which she belongs. Blackburn is a member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and is Program Operations Manager at Interfaith America. Outside of her studies, she enjoys exploring Chicago on foot and getting lost in good stories.