During the Fall 2026 semester, Allocco will be teaching an introductory Hindu Traditions course and Death and the Afterlife: Ghosts, Demons and Ancestors in Asian Religions at Colgate University. In addition to teaching courses, she will present one public lecture as the NEH Chair and share her scholarship at a colloquium hosted by Colgate’s Division of Arts and Humanities.

“I loved my time at Colgate; it was obviously very formative for me,” Allocco said. “And it’s lovely to be thought of as someone who can contribute to an institution that I admire. I majored in religion, Asian studies and philosophy there, and I am doing work now that directly connects to what I studied. The first time I went to India was as a junior at Colgate and now I co-lead my own study abroad courses there. In many ways, this is a full circle moment.”

She plans to use this experience as a professional development opportunity and to bring back what she learned during her time at Colgate University to ������Ƶ.

“I’m excited to join a talented department and be on a campus where there is a lot of sharing of scholarship and I can learn how I can adjust my pedagogy and teaching,” Allocco said. “I am looking forward tolearning from new mentorship models and gaining fresh insights that I can bring back and infuse into my own work and classroom at ������Ƶ. I am most invigorated in the classroom when my students are shifting my thinking, so I anticipate teaching in this context will offer me new perspectives to bring back.”

Personally, Allocco is looking forward to visiting with Wanda Warren Berry, professor emeritus of philosophy and religion and her mentor during her time at Colgate University, who is now 94. She is also looking forward to bringing engaged and experiential learning into the classroom and teaching in diverse contexts where students can contribute their own experiences.

“At Colgate there are many students from South Asia who grew up with Hindu culture and practices, so I’m looking forward to diverse learning environments where students can contribute their own lived experiences.” Allocco said. “I am also planning to embed some of the signature elements from my ������Ƶ courses into my classes at Colgate, such as site visits to Hindu temples.”

What Allocco is looking forward to the most is sharing her Fulbright sabbatical research on soundscapes and ritual art forms in India in Colgate’s classrooms and colloquiums.

“I have new scholarship from my sabbatical in India that I am excited to test drive, present and continue to develop,” Allocco said. “I’m excited for this growth opportunity and I am especially grateful to dean Kelly for his enthusiasm and support.”

Allocco’s professorship is both an opportunity to contribute to another institution and to bring new ideas and experiences back to ������Ƶ.

“I am incredibly proud of Professor Allocco and her well-earned distinguished professorship at Colgate,” said Hilton Kelly, dean of ������Ƶ College, the College of Arts and Sciences. “Opportunities like this allow our faculty to share their expertise nationally while returning to ������Ƶ with new perspectives and experiences that enrich our classrooms and ultimately benefit our students.”

The seeds that were planted during Allocco’s time at Colgate helped to define her career at ������Ƶ.

“I feel certain that this experience will enrich my teaching,” Allocco said. “The humanities push us inquire, to ask important questions and develop our own positions. I think that happens best in conversation, so I am sure that joining a different set of conversations temporarily will enrich me as a teacher, scholar and mentor.”

Colgate University, established in 1819, is a liberal arts college located in New York with an enrollment of over 3,000 students. Their Department of Religion has nine faculty members.

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At ������Ƶ, faculty say preparing students means helping them understand the people they will interact with throughout their lives, and that includes the influence of faith and religious identity.

That commitment to multifaith understanding is a primary goal of the university’s Multifaith Strategic Plan, which strives to “support opportunities for multifaith learning and engagement for all members of the academic community.”

“������Ƶ’s Multifaith Strategic Plan is a promise to our students, faculty, staff and the wider community that we will take them seriously as whole, complex people,” said Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society.

The multifaith experience

The Multifaith Scholars Program is a two-year program, founded in 2016, that emphasizes interdisciplinary learning as student scholars undertake original research projects and study in global contexts connected with religious diversity and multireligious societies.

“Our work is richer when we have students bringing questions from their own disciplines,” said Amy Allocco, director of the program and professor of religious studies. “It is a sign of a vibrant campus ecosystem when not only students but also their mentors can see their interests and expertise  intersect with questions of interreligious contact, religion and society.”

Allocco says that the breadth of disciplines represented by students and mentors participating in the program has widened each year. The current cohort includes students with diverse majors such as psychology, theatrical design, history, economics consulting, political science, religious studies, and international and global Studies. Owen Hayes ’26, a history major with minors in political science and religious studies, is a 2024-2026 Multifaith Scholar studying the historical and contemporary relationship between Christian missionaries and Indigenous Australians.

“I’ve always been interested in understanding the interreligious encounters of the world, like global Christianity and understanding how different communities can come together and understand such an important religious concept in such different, varying ways, but still have that belief of Christianity,” Hayes said.

The interreligious studies minor also allows students to analyze the historical and contemporary encounters between and interactions among religious communities and traditions.

“������Ƶ has done incredible work in enfranchising multifaith as an academic as well as a student affairs initiative and aligning and even blending those areas in meaningful ways that enhance the student experience,” Allocco said.

Multifaith in the classroom (and clinic)

In the Department of Nursing, faculty don’t just train future healthcare professionals on specific medical assessments but, as Assistant Professor of Nursing Lori Hubbard says, they “prepare students for the diversity in the populations they will serve,” including religion.

“Diversity in people is understanding their religious background, because religious practices are often infused into health practices and health beliefs,” said Hubbard, who teaches the Healthcare Relationships course, which focuses on understanding diverse backgrounds in healthcare.

The course is just one component of the Department of Nursing’s commitment to equitable healthcare teaching, which is incorporated throughout the curriculum.

“From birth to death and everywhere in between, the people that are going to be important in a person’s wellness or their healing may come from their church body,” said Hubbard, who says they also want students to understand the role of the chaplain in a hospital setting. “People may have members of a church congregation bring them meals, they may have pastors and friends visit to pray with them. A person’s support network is a social determinant of health.”

In December 2025, a faculty team consisting of Pennington, Jeanmarie Koonts, assistant professor of nursing; Molly Green, assistant professor of public health, and Helen Orr, assistant professor of religious studies, was awarded a $60,000 Faith & Health Campus Grant from Interfaith America to promote awareness of how religious diversity impacts healthcare space and medical decision-making.

Engineering a multifaith course

Along with nursing, several ������Ƶ courses across disciplines integrate multifaith understanding. Orr is co-teaching a new course, Engineering A Better World, with Professor of Engineering Sirena Hargrove-Leak on ethical practices in engineering.

“Religion is an important category for a lot of people, and it informs not only beliefs, but also everyday practice and ritual, including when people fast, how they dress and how they interact in professional spaces,” Orr said. “One of our sessions in the course focuses on the value of multi-faith spaces in professional working environments. Those spaces can be beneficial both for religious people and non-religious people, while also encouraging us to think about how environments themselves can be designed to be more inclusive.”

Hargrove Leak says the engineering curriculum requires an ethics course and, historically, faculty advised students to choose an ethics course through the Core Curriculum. The downside, she says, is they may not connect what they’re learning to engineering practice. This new course, she says, connects the dots directly.

“The work of engineering professionals has the potential to impact people directly; therefore, ethical practice is critically important,” said Hargrove-Leak.

Communicating religion

While Orr and Hargrove-Leak’s course is new this semester, Professor of Journalism Anthony Hatcher has been studying and teaching the intersection of religion and media for more than 20 years. His course Religion and Media analyzes how the two interact through media coverage of religious issues and themes, religion’s use of television and the Internet and media portrayals of religious people and traditions.

Hatcher began teaching the course in 2003, coming from a longtime interest in the intersection of the two subjects.

“It has always sparked my interest how religion intersects not only with a news item, but how it intersects with popular culture,” he said. “I tell my students, ‘If there is a secular entity of some sort, there is a religious corollary to it.’”

Finding religious connections in culture is endless for Hatcher, who says he never runs out of material for the course. For one assignment, students must attend a house of worship outside of their own faith and do a research project on the experience. The projects range from more well-known religious practices to lesser-known, like a student who visited a coven of witches in Hillsborough, North Carolina

“I make it clear: this is not a religion class. I’m not here to teach you about the scripture,” Hatcher said. “When they go (to these houses of worship), it’s not just a religious thing. I say, ‘What kind of media did they use? Do they have cameras? Do they have a single microphone? Do they use screens and slides? Is it a majestic organ? What are you seeing there? Did they give you a paper program? Everything that’s media.’ It gets them thinking about all the mediated ways that they experience religion.”

The course is open to all majors, and Hatcher says it can be relevant for all professions.

“The subject matter is so important,” Hatcher said. “It’s like how study abroad is mind-broadening. I think understanding where somebody else comes from, especially if faith is a big part of who they are, is a big deal.”

And for Pennington, ������Ƶ’s approach to multifaith learning is an example for others to follow.

“We live in a moment where we can clearly see that the faith commitments and religious practices interact with our global politics, our legal systems, our media environments, and our healthcare systems,” said Pennington. “By attending to multifaith education across academic departments and programs, ������Ƶ is leading the way in preparing its students for a rapidly evolving world.”

This story is part of a series of stories focusing on ������Ƶ’s Multifaith Strategic Plan. 

“Sweetening” refers to the softening of deities’ iconographies, the standardization of religious narratives, and the sanitization of ritual practices. Alongside this current exists “intensification,” the insistence on the continuing relevance of rigorous, visceral, and frequently stigmatized practices and beliefs, often in response to new circumstances and challenges.

Individual chapters trace these currents across diverse Hindu geographic, linguistic, ethnic, and social contexts; textual and theological traditions; and ritual and media formats. Allocco’s own chapter, “Insistence, Persistence, and Resistance in Tamil Hindu Rituals to Call the Dead,” theorizes from a 2019 ritual performed for a deceased man named Ganapathy to consider how ancestors make their desires known through possession performances and demand particular offerings and practices—including alcohol, crematory ash/grave soil, and tongue-piercing—and argue that the dead’s steadfast refusal to be satisfied by anything but fierce practices and materials signals a deliberate resistance to the sweetening trends visible in many contemporary Tamil ritual contexts. Director of ������Ƶ’s Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, Brian Pennington, contributed a chapter on local deities in the Indian Himalayas.

Allocco and Zeiler’s collaboration evolved over several years. In 2019, Allocco delivered a lecture titled “Ritual Relationships with the Dead in South Indian Hinduism” at the University of Helsinki at Zeiler’s invitation. During her time in Finland, they began conceiving a joint project focused on the categories of sweetening and intensification in contemporary Hinduism. The next year, the pair applied for and were awarded a Collaborative International Research Grant from the American Academy of Religion to begin a research project that would bring these two currents into sustained conversation.

They then convened a double panel under the title “Intensification vs. Sweetening? New Patterns in Contemporary Representation and Practice” at the 49th Annual Conference on South Asia in 2021. The two sessions brought together a diverse complement of scholars from Europe, South and Southeast Asia, and the United States to consider this dialectic from different methodological, regional, and disciplinary perspectives. Allocco and seven other scholars presented papers across the two panels and the ensuing discussion helped to develop the theoretical framework for the planned publication. The resulting book highlights how sweetening and intensification processes intersect with and even drive contemporary (re)negotiations, (re)interpretations, and (re)constructions of Hindu deities, practices, narratives, and symbols.

Allocco and Zeiler were recently invited to participate in the New Books Network podcast on Indian Religions about their new book. The episode, hosted by Raj Balkaran, will be available .

Amy Allocco was elected treasurer and executive committee member of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) during the 23rd IAHR World Congress in Kraków, Poland from August 24-30, 2025.

A consortium of learned societies for the study of religion around the world, the IAHR was founded in 1950 and has grown to include more than 50 national, regional, and affiliated associations. Allocco will serve in this leadership role for five years, until the next World Congress in 2030, effectuating IAHR fiscal policy, collecting fees and dues, paying the organization’s bills and engaging in fundraising efforts. She succeeds Andrea Rota (University of Oslo, Norway) as treasurer of the organization.

During the week-long Congress, Allocco also presented the first report on her research conducted in 2023-2025 in South India. Titled “Making a Body for Periyandavar in Rural Tamil Spaces,” the paper described the little-known worship of a Hindu lineage deity (kuladevam) called Periyandavar. To stage these Periyandavar’s elaborate rituals, patrilineal relatives hire drummer-priests to fashion a massive anthropomorphic image of the deity from the soil of the family’s native village. Allocco drew on theory on spatial practices, material religion and the body/embodiment to analyze local understandings of the kuladevam’s temporary earthen body, which is only one among Periyandavar’s multiple embodiments. Allocco’s paper explicated indigenous theories of co-substantiality, permeability, and agency and extrapolated from two multi-day ceremonies that she documented in 2024 while conducting field research in Tamil-speaking South India with support from a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship.

Allocco was also invited to moderate a roundtable discussion organized to launch the recently published book titled “Religion and Gender Equality around the Baltic Sea. Ideologies, Policies and Private Lives,” which was edited by Milda Alisauskiene, Egle Aleknaite-Skarubske and Marianne Bjeland Kartzow (Routledge, 2025). The volume aims to rethink the intersections of gender and religion as well as the secular and religious in implementing and challenging gender equality at individual, institutional, and societal levels in the regions around the Baltic Sea. Its chapters utilize approaches from multiple disciplines and present data drawn from fieldwork in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Norway. As moderator, Allocco offered an overview of the co-edited volume and posed a series of questions to the four women scholars who participated, two of whom contributed to the book and two of whom offered comparative perspectives from Poland and Sweden.

At the World Congress, Allocco concluded her five-year term as co-coordinator of the IAHR’s Women Scholars Network (WSN). The group was formed to facilitate scholarly exchange among women scholars and under Allocco’s leadership she and her co-coordinator, Milda Alisauskiene (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania), introduced a successful webinar series.  While in Kraków, Allocco and Alisauskiene convened the WSN meeting, which drew more than 100 attendees, and hosted a reception for participants. They also arranged for a team of librarians from the University of Tübingen to present on their partnership with the WSN aimed at increasing the visibility of women scholars’ research in the study of religion and announced the new WSN Co-Coordinators, Jessica Albrecht (Center of Advanced Studies, Erlangen, Germany) and Carolina Greising Diaz (Catholic University of Uruguay).

Finally, during the World Congress, Allocco met with the editor from Blooomsbury Academic who oversees the “Advances in Religious Studies” book series that Allocco is an editor of, along with Steven Sutliffe (The University of Edinburgh) and Bettina Schmidt (University of Wales). In addition to meeting with the editors, Allocco also engaged with potential authors who are interested in submitting proposals to the series.

Approximately 1,300 scholars of religion convened in Krakow for the IAHR World Congress, whose theme was “Out of Europe: Studying Religion(s) in Interconnected Worlds.” The conference’s local hosts were the Jagiellonian University and the Polish Society for the Study of Religions.

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While nearly 60 students presented their undergraduate research in the Snow Atrium of Schar Hall on July 24, their research took place beyond ������Ƶ, in the local community and around the world, including Owen Hayes’ project, focusing on the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the settlers of Australia.

“I’ve always been interested in Australia, mainly due to Steve Irwin,” said Hayes, a history major from Holly Springs, North Carolina. “I’ve always been interested in religion and connecting how religion can combine new cultures, and how it can be negative and positive. I try to understand the middle group in how religion can be taught, learned and shared.”

Global growth

A large portion of Hayes’ research was completed during a study abroad experience at Curtain University in Perth, Australia, while also looking at archives in Canberra and Sydney.

“It was a great experience to understand myself and other cultures, learning about new people and how their lives are lived,” said Hayes, who is a Multifaith Scholar. “It definitely helped being in the country that I was researching rather than sitting at a computer and looking at the online archives.”

Jo Bogart ’26, a classical studies and creative writing double major, took her research to Rome, Italy this summer to work on a feminist translation and revision of Virgil’s “Aeneid,” the Latin epic poem that tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and went to Italy.

“The work I’m doing this summer is rooted in my being in Rome,” said Bogart, who is also minoring in women, gender and sexualities studies. “I’m looking at writing in place and the aspect of writing in the place in which the original author of an ancient text, like the ‘Aeneid,’ was written as I tell it in my own way.”

Hard work paying off

Both Bogart and Hayes presented at the Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) presentations on July 24, which provides an opportunity for students to gain meaningful research experience over the summer, without the pressure of other courses during a typical semester.

Part of the undergraduate research process is mentorship with faculty members, a unique experience for students at ������Ƶ. Hayes was mentored by Brian Pennington, director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society and professor of religious studies.

“I had two classes with him before I started this project,” said Hayes. “He’s a great guy in terms of, one, letting you do the research yourself, letting you lead your own path; but at the same time, leading you on how to do academic research correctly.”

Students apply for SURE, which usually takes place during the summer before the junior or senior year. Undergraduate research is one of the five ������Ƶ Experiences, and students are expected to complete at least two of the experiences before they graduate.

“It’s fun to present the hard work you’ve done over the year,” said Hayes, who was presenting for the first time at SURE. “It’s nerve-racking to start, and I’m working out the kinks in my presentation, but I’m looking forward to how my research is going to evolve over the next year and how I’m going to present at other undergraduate research conferences.”

Research across disciplines

SURE research topics span across disciplines, including Asia Green’s project, investigating whether expecting cognitive benefits from exercise would impact cognitive function or if it’s just exercise alone.

“I’m a public health minor and exercise science major, so we talk a lot about the placebo effect, and I wanted to know if expected benefits from specific exercise would increase mood and cognitive function or if just exercise alone would do it,” said Green. “Everyone is told ‘Just exercise,’ but is it the exercise or what we’re being told about exercise?”

Green says it appears that expecting cognitive benefits does have a positive impact, but there needs to be a larger sample size to get more results, something she plans to do in the upcoming academic year, along with her mentor Madison Chandler, assistant professor of exercise science.

Merrie Byers ’26, a cinema and television arts major, didn’t do what some may consider a traditional research project for SURE, she created a documentary exploring the friendship of two religious leaders whose communities share a complicated past.

The documentary focuses on the reverends of two churches in Burlington, North Carolina, with a deep, complicated and connected history. During U.S. slavery, according to Byers, members of Union Ridge Church owned members of Union Chapel United Church of Christ. Now, the reverends of each church, which sit across the street from one another, have developed a close relationship.

“They are using their friendship to combat this prejudice and hosted a committee where 10 members of the church from each side got together and talked about these differences,” said Byers, who is from Wake Forest, North Carolina. “It really made a difference in how these churches have blossomed into a bonded community.”

As students continue to develop their research, they also have the opportunity to present during the spring semester, at the annual Spring Undergraduate Research Forum or SURF.

“Our students knocked it out of the park once again,” said Justin Clar, director of undergraduate research and associate professor of chemistry. “The growth of SURE participants over just 8 weeks is truly amazing. I can’t wait to see how these projects progress over the next academic year.”

More than 50 immigrant and refugee students received recognition for their dedicated participation in weekly English classes supported by ������Ƶ students, faculty, and staff.

The graduation marks a milestone in an ongoing partnership between the Burlington Masjid and ������Ƶ’s Multifaith Scholars Program, as well as ������Ƶ’s Global Neighborhood. Throughout this academic year, ������Ƶ students and staff have volunteered at the Masjid, providing structured ESL instruction, tutoring and conversation support to a community made up primarily of newcomers from Afghanistan and Syria.

“This initiative is rooted in our commitment to global citizenship and local engagement,” said Sandy Marshall, faculty director of the Global Neighborhood and interim director of the Multifaith Scholars Program. “The Burlington Masjid plays a vital role in supporting newly arrived refugees, and this collaboration is a natural extension of our shared goals.”

Each Sunday morning throughout the academic year, approximately 50 students have gathered for lessons in listening, reading and writing in English. The program is tailored to meet the unique needs of learners adapting to life in a new country.

Multifaith Scholar Bethany Marzella ’24 and ������Ƶ College Fellow Rachel Curtis ’24 were among the early volunteers who helped launch the initiative with just a handful of students in 2023. As the number of refugee families in the Burlington area increased, so did interest from ������Ƶ volunteers, especially amid reductions in federal refugee resettlement support.

Alyssa Carney ’26, an international and global studies and history double major, and Owen Hayes ’26, a history major, began volunteering in fall 2024,  as part of their community engagement efforts with the MFS program. Recognizing the need for consistent, structured language support, they worked with Marshall and the Masjid to help expand the program.

“Seeing the class grow has been incredible,” said Dina Halayqa, volunteer coordinator for the ESL program at the Masjid. “This is more than just grammar and vocabulary. It’s a space where people are rewriting their stories in a new land.”

Greatly contributing to the growth of the program has been the dedicated support given by Nicole Galante, assistant director of National and International Fellowships, who joined as a volunteer in January. Like Halayqa, Galante agrees that the program is about more than language learning.

“Meaning-making is a communal process that transcends the boundaries of language,” said Galante. “I love helping students at the masjid learn English, but I really love coming together despite our differences to learn more about ourselves and the world.”

Additional volunteers who joined in the spring include Jesse White ’26, also a multifaith scholar, Tajallah Amirkhil ‘28, Huria Tahiry ‘26 and Jenna Abousaab ‘27. With increased capacity, the program offers two class sections: one for primarily Arabic-speaking students from Syria, and another for Dari and Pashto speakers from Afghanistan.

“As a Syrian American, it’s incredibly meaningful to have been a part of this experience,” said Abousaab, “which has not only allowed me to give back to the community but has helped me reconnect with my roots in a way I never expected.”

Yasmeen, a Syrian student in the program, shared what the class has meant to her: “I still have a lot of learning to do, but this class has taught me how to build relationships in my community and communicate with my neighbors.”

For the ������Ƶ students involved, the experience has offered insight into community engagement, cross-cultural connection and mutual learning.

As the program looks to continue in the next academic year, organizers hope to further expand the curriculum, recruit more volunteers, and build on the deep relationships formed through language and learning.

After a highly selective application and interview process, students are awarded $5,000 annually to support research and study in global contexts connected with religious diversity and multi-religious societies. Students who show great potential as academically curious and socially engaged leaders committed to their own ongoing development and the enhancement of their local and global communities are selected each spring.

Sandy Marshall, associate professor of geography, serves as interim director of the Multifaith Scholars program this year while Professor Amy Allocco is on research leave in South India funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies.

“We had a very strong applicant pool, and I am excited about the diversity of backgrounds and research interests represented in this new cohort,” Marshall said. “Their topics span a range of time periods and regions, from the Middle East to here in North America. Likewise, their proposed research combines diverse interdisciplinary perspectives from history and politics, to economics and psychology. We are excited to work with these students and their mentors over the next two years to facilitate their scholarly development and personal growth.”

In addition to pursuing their faculty-mentored undergraduate research projects and undertaking academic coursework in religious studies and interreligious studies, the scholars will extend the program’s ongoing community partnership with the Burlington Masjid. Through the partnership, scholars participate in youth and social events with the local Muslim community, teach in the mosque’s English-language tutoring program, join community garden workdays, volunteer with the food pantry, and take part in potlucks and iftar meals during Ramadan.

Project Title: Navigating Modesty from a Modern Perspective: A Comparison of Adolescent Muslim Women in Palestine and North Carolina.
Major: Political Science
Minor: Interreligious Studies
Mentor: Amy Allocco

Kenzie Ross

Project Title: Economics and the Relationship between Religion and a Consumption-Based Economy
Majors: Economics Consulting, Marketing
Minor: Interreligious Studies
Mentor: Cora Wigger

Christina Skelly

Project Title: Rewriting the Script: Muslim Women, US Policy, and the Legacy of Orientalism
Majors: International and Global Studies, Religious Studies
Minors: Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science
Mentor: Sandy Marshall

Lizeth Torres-Tomas

Project Title: Faith, Law, and Migration: Analyzing the Sanctuary Movement and Faith-Based Responses to Anti-Immigrant Policies Surrounding Latinx and Muslim Communities
Majors: Political Science, Sociology
Minor: Interreligious Studies
Mentor: Michael Matthews

This year’s conference centered around the theme of “Transitions.” Student paper topics ranged from the comparison of Gen X and Gen Z views of religion to the evolution of sexual and Christian themes in vampire films. Their international research took them to elephant sanctuaries in Kenya and Tibetan Buddhist centers in India; their rigorous methods included ethnographic interviews and visual analyses of cinema; and their conclusions contributed to such psychological challenges as anger management and recovery from religious trauma.

The American Academy of Religion is the largest scholarly organization in the world dedicated to the professional study of religion. Roughly three hundred scholars working at colleges and universities in this region regularly participate in the annual meeting. The regional meeting also offers limited spots for undergraduate students to present their academic research and engage with professional scholars from across the region.

Four sessions were held to showcase undergraduate research, and ������Ƶ students garnered five of the 16 highly competitive undergraduate slots. Three of the five students were members of ������Ƶ’s Multifaith Scholars program, led by Interim Director Sandy Marshall, who also attended the conference. Another student was a Lumen scholar, and one student took the initiative to craft their own credit-bearing undergraduate research project for ELR. All five students were closely mentored in their discipline by an ������Ƶ faculty member who helped to guide their research and prepare their presentations over the course of their junior and senior years. The papers will also be delivered before ������Ƶ audiences on SURF Day, Tuesday, April 29, 2025.

Support for travel was provided by the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Society, the Department of Religious Studies and the Office of Undergraduate Research. The funding also supported a small student group of conference observers as well as group co-organizer Sheila Otieno, assistant professor of religious studies and distinguished emerging scholar of religious studies.

Undergraduate Research Presentations

Sandoh Ahmadu (MFS), “Bridging East and West: An Alternative for Emotional Self-Regulation” (Pamela D. Winfield, mentor)

Kiara Cronin (MFS), “Traditional Faith, Contemporary Doubts: Is Christianity Adapting to Generation Z?” (Sandra Reid, mentor)

Drew Fetterolf, “The Elephant in the Room: Being Maasai, Tourism, and Conversation” (Sheila Otieno, mentor)

Olivia Lancashire (Lumen Scholar ), “A New Intervention: High Control Religion, Hell, and Healing” (Lynn Huber, mentor)

Kaelyn Rosenburg (Multi-Faith Scholar), “Unholy Desires: The Evolution of Christianity and Sexuality in Vampire Film” (Nicole Triche, mentor)

������Ƶ Faculty Presentations

Pamela D. Winfield, “Materiality as Method: How to Do Things with Zen”

Andrew Monteith, “Queering and Dwelling: Applying Religious Studies to a 1930s Sexual Autobiography”

Her unique religious background also stands out, and as Religious News Service reporter Yonat Shimron notes, her multi-religious identity is likely “a map of America’s future.”

Harris was raised Hindu by her mother, often attended a Christian church growing up and as an adult, and celebrates Jewish holidays with her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who grew up attending a Reform synagogue. Shimron spoke with Brian Pennington, professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society at ������Ƶ, to learn more about multi-religious identities.

Pennington told Shimron that students in his courses who come from a singular religious tradition are becoming rarer. “These days, they have multiple influences that inform their spiritual ideas and identities,” Pennington said. ”

Pennington said Harris’s background could appeal to younger voters. “It’s not at all hard to imagine that (Harris’) personal religious and spiritual history would speak to younger Americans who demographically have much more experience of this kind of religious diversity in their families and backgrounds than older Americans.”

to learn more.

Pennington is a historian of modern Hinduism and theorist of interreligious relations. His primary research interests are in colonial-era religion in India, the history of religion in South Asia, religion and violence, and contemporary religious change in India. He is the author of “Was Hinduism Invented?: Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion,” editor of “Teaching Religion and Violence”  and co-editor with Amy L. Allocco of “Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Indian Religion.” His current book in progress, “God’s Fifth Abode: Entrepreneurial Hinduism in the Indian Himalayas,” is based on over a decade of field research in the pilgrimage city of Uttarkashi.

Changing the narrative

SURE is about more than just researching a topic – the students are exploring personal questions and interests that can spark wide-ranging, impactful conversations.

“I want to change the narrative,” said Fiona Hodge ‘26, whose research focuses on the intersectionality of queer college student identity.

Hodge, a psychology major and vice president of the Undergraduate Research Student Association (URSA) identifies as a member of the LBGTQ community and noticed a gap in the research around queer people.

“The previous research focused on discrimination and talking about queer people, but not focusing on their own perspectives,” said Hodge. “So, I want to provide research that’s by queer researchers for queer people.”

SURE provides an opportunity for students to work with faculty and gain meaningful research experience over the summer, without the pressure of other courses during a typical semester. Students apply for the opportunity, which usually takes place during the summer before the junior or senior year.

“Undergraduate research has been shown to have a lot of great benefits for students and faculty, thinking about developing critical thinking and communication skills, which is evident at the SURE presentations,” said Eric Hall, director of undergraduate research and interim assistant provost for scholarship and creative activity. “Presenting at conferences is the way we show our research findings, and this shows students what it would be like if they go to a regional or national conference.”

Hodge first started doing research this year and says the experience has gone well, especially with the help of her mentor Adam Kim, assistant professor of psychology.

“This is my first-time presenting research. I’m excited. It feels really cool to see your research come to life,” Hodge said. “My mentor pushes me to work harder and be more creative, to think outside of the box and not just come up with an okay question but with an interesting question.”

Queerness in the classroom

The child of two educators, a future teacher and a queer-identifying student, Lindsey Hefty ’25 also turned to her LGBTQ+ identity for research.

“I wanted to combine my major of elementary education with my minor in women’s, gender and sexualities studies with all the discourse surrounding queerness in schools. There’s been a lot of negativity,” said Hefty, who is also an ������Ƶ Teaching Fellow. “There is a lot of legislation that’s making it impossible for queer identifies to exist in educational spaces.”

The debate over LGBTQ+ issues in public schools has been a hot-button political issue in the last several years. In 2023, North Carolina passed the  “Parents Bill of Rights,” which requires teachers to notify parents if a student questions their gender or uses different pronouns.

In collaboration with her mentor, Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English Kevin Bourque, Hefty interviewed LGBTQ+ educators and fielded survey responses from across North Carolina.

“We are looking for less obvious ways that queerness is happening in the classroom, less safe space posters and more covert incorporations of identity, and that’s a lot of what we’ve found,” said Hefty. “It’s also been really inspiring to talk to other queer educators about their experiences and stories.”

Hefty said she and Bourque fit together well – both being queer-identifying and interested in further exploring queer studies.

“Lindsey has been a pleasure to work with: thoughtful, perceptive, creative, good-natured, smart and funny. I love how her research ties not only to her professional goals, but also her outlook on the world,” Bourque said.

Using research to help

Research was one of the main reasons Natalie Peeples ’26 and Archie Tan ‘25 chose to attend ������Ƶ with undergraduate research being one of the Five ������Ƶ Experiences. Two of those experiences are needed for the Experiential Learning Requirement (ELR) to graduate. Students earn two ELRs for their participation in SURE.

Both Peeples and Tan are Lumen Scholars  with their SURE research being an extension of that work as well. Tan, the president of URSA, is a computer science major researching using artificial intelligence to detect pancreatic cancer.

“Right now, technology is growing super-fast, even for the people in the field, it’s really hard to catch up,” said Tan, who is also a first-generation college student. “I want to help people utilize advanced technology in their daily life. I want to use the technology to help people.”

Peeples’ topic is helping people in a different way – looking at what she describes as an understudied area in childhood well-being. The psychology major is interviewing parents of four-to five-year-old children in the US and asking them about what they think is important for early childhood, later she will talk with parents in Denmark, comparing the two countries.

“Denmark and the U.S. focus on very different things when it comes to childhood,” said Peeples, who is also an Honors Fellow. “In Denmark, they are focused more on play and outdoor time, while in the US, the focus is more on academics.”

A good childhood

Finding the parents to interview has been easy for Peeples through the dance classes she teaches at ������Ƶ DanceWorks. Her mother is also a pre-school teacher. Her mentor Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler, professor of psychology and director of the Center for Research on Global Engagement, is helping to find parents in Denmark, which they will talk with over the next few months. Peeples plans to go to Denmark next summer to complete her Lumen and Honors thesis research.

“My mentor has taught me about resilience and organization, while making sure that you take time for yourself, your own mental health and well-being because it can be draining trying to do all these things at once,” said Peeples.

The two began working together in fall 2023 and Vandermaas-Peeler says Peeples has enthusiastically embraced the project.

“She’s grown tremendously throughout these intensive weeks and SURE has been exceptional preparation for the next two years as Natalie explores these concepts in the U.S. and in Denmark,” Vandermaas-Peeler said. “I feel very fortunate to be in a mentoring relationship with Natalie and support her intellectual journey.”

What does it mean to believe?

Growing up Catholic, Kiara Cronin ‘25 is tapping into her perceptions of religion – looking at how others in her generation (Generation Z) view faith and spirituality, compared to Generation X.

“Spirituality can mean different things for different people,” said Cronin, who is majoring in human service studies. “I see people on social media saying they are spiritual but not religious or they believe in a higher power, but not necessarily God. I thought it was interesting how my generation is open about not subscribing to a certain religion and how that differs from someone in my mom’s generation.”

The project grew out of Cronin’s work as a Multifaith Scholar through the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society, in collaboration with her mentor Senior Lecturer in Human Service Studies Sandra Reid. Cronin is also an Isabella Cannon Leadership Fellow and connected with Reid through the Disarming Injustice course which all the fellows are required to take, along with a Civil Rights Leadership Tour.

Cronin interviewed people about their thoughts on religion and spirituality and held focus groups on the topic. The culmination of the research will be a podcast miniseries about her findings.

“A surprising response from people is that they don’t want to get rid of the traditional ritual acts or traditional values, because that is what makes the church what it is,” she said. “But they do think, to some degree, there has to be some change in how the church interacts with young people.”

Just the start

Before this project, Cronin had never done an extensive research project, so she found the process intimidating at first, something Garrett Schmiederer ’25 can relate to.

“It’s been time consuming, and difficult at times, but I’m enjoying it so far,” said Schmiederer, an exercise science major who hopes to become an athletic trainer. “I’ve always wanted to do research and it’s been a learning experience.”

Schmiederer’s topic looks at concussions in student athletes and their effect on headaches and sleep. His research is still developing, and he plans to have more data by the end of the fall semester and present at the Spring Undergraduate Research Forum in 2025.

“It’s just the start so far,” said Schmiderer. “I’m giving them an ImPACT test, which is a concussion baseline test and then after that I’m giving them a survey that is about quality of sleep, if they have headaches or migraines and how it’s affecting their quality of life.”

Schmiederer is mentored by Caroline Ketcham, associate dean of ������Ƶ College, the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of exercise science, and Hall, who is also his academic adviser.

“I’ve had a lot of success as a scholar myself, but I enjoy talking to students and working with them to develop something and see their success,” said Hall. “It’s amazing to see the topics and say ‘Wow that’s impressive,’ but then when you talk to the students at the presentations and they are able to translate what they’ve done to me, who’s not in their field, is really impressive.”