List of Contributors
Beth R. Crisp is Professor and Discipline Leader for Social Work at Deakin University in Australia. Working at the interface between religion and social welfare practice, she explores how faith-based responses can address social exclusion for people who find themselves on the margins of the Church or wider society. Beth is the author or editor of 12 books including Re-imagining Religion and Belief: 21st Century Policy and Practice (Policy Press), Eliminating Gender-Based Violence (Routledge) and Sustaining Social Inclusion (Routledge), as well as more than 120 major articles in peer academic journals and numerous book chapters.
Rocío Figueroa is a Peruvian theologian, Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the Te Kupenga Catholic Theological College in Auckland and an External Researcher at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at Otago University, New Zealand. She has a bachelor’s degree and licence in theology from the Pontifical Faculty of Theology in Lima and her doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. She has previously lectured and worked in Peru, Italy and Mexico and worked in the Holy See as head of the Women’s section in the Pontifical Council for the Laity. Figueroa’s present research focus is theological and pastoral responses for survivors of Church sexual abuse.
Ruard Ganzevoort is Professor of Practical Theology and Dean of the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has published extensively in the field of religion and sexual abuse. For more information, visit www.ruardganzevoort.nl/.
Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe is a Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Biblical Studies at the University of Botswana. She is a Womanist Scholar. She obtained her PhD in Old Testament Studies from the University of Murdoch in Perth, Australia in 2012. The title of her PhD thesis was This Courageous Woman: A Socio-rhetorical Womanist Reading of Proverbs 31:10–31. She is a member of the Old Testament Society of South Africa (OTSSA), the African Consortium for Law and Religion Studies (ACLARS) and the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Her research focus is on the Bible, women, gender and environment.
Elisabet le Roux is Research Director of the Unit for Religion and Development Research at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She has a proven track record in mixed methodology research on religion and gender-based violence, with a focus on qualitative research especially in conflict and post-conflict settings. Over the past ten years she has secured funding and delivered a range of evaluation and formative research projects in 22 countries across four continents, with a particular focus on gender equality, gender-based violence, women’s participation, and a critical lens on the important roles of religion and culture.
Karen O’Donnell leads the programmes in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College, Salisbury, UK. In her most recent publications – Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary, and the Body in Trauma Theology (SCM Press, 2018) and Feminist Trauma Theologies: Body, Scripture and Church in Critical Perspective (SCM Press, 2020) – her research is particularly focused on the places where bodies intersect with theology.
Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian from Ireland whose work centres around themes of conflict, language and religion. His poetry has been featured in Poetry Ireland Review, the Harvard Review, AAP’s Poem A Day, BBC, RTÉ, NPR, ABC and others. He presents Poetry Unbound from On Being Studios. He is the former leader of the Corrymeela Community and the co-founder, together with Paul Doran, of the Tenx9 storytelling movement. His poetry and prose have been published by Canterbury Press, Hodder and Broadleaf. For more information, visit padraigotuama.com.
Monica Poole serves as Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Current projects include a chapter for an open textbook on epistemology, a series of adaptations of biblical texts and an article about wrongful forgiveness.
Jeremy Punt is Professor of New Testament in the Theology Faculty at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His work focuses on biblical hermeneutics past and present, including critical theory in interpretation, the intersection of biblical and cultural studies, and on the significance of contextual configurations of power and gender, and social systems and identifications for biblical interpretation. He has recently published Postcolonial Biblical Interpretation: Reframing Paul (Brill) and regularly contributes to academic journals and book publications.
Jayme R. Reaves is a public theologian and her research focuses on the intersections between theology, peace/conflict, trauma, interfaith cooperation, memory, gender and stories. She is the Director of Academic Development and lecturer in theology and biblical studies at Sarum College (UK) and has an M.Div from Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia (USA) as well as an M.Phil in Reconciliation Studies and a PhD in Theology from Trinity College, University of Dublin (Ireland).
Nicola Slee is Director of Research at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, and Professor of Feminist Practical Theology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Her most recent publications are Fragments for Fractured Times: What Feminist Practical Theology Brings to the Table (SCM Press, 2020) and Abba, Amma: Improvisations on the Lord’s Prayer (Canterbury Press, 2021, forthcoming).
Mitzi J. Smith PhD is the J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia (USA). Her research interests are Womanist and African American Interpretation with an emphasis on systemic injustice, ancient and modern slavery and biblical interpretation more broadly. Her latest book, co-edited with Jin Young Choi, is Minoritized Women Reading Race and Ethnicity: Intersectional Approaches to Constructed Identity and Early Christian Texts (Lexington, 2020).
Shanell T. Smith PhD is a New Testament and early Christianity scholar and an ordained Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is also a doctoral coach and keynote speaker. Her scholarly interests include Feminist and Womanist Biblical Interpretation, Gender and Sexuality in the New Testament, and the intersections of Post-colonial, African American and New Testament Studies, particularly with regard to the book of Revelation. She is the author of several works, including: touched: For Survivors of Sexual Assault Like Me Who Have Been Hurt by Church Folk and for Those Who Will Care (Fortress Press, 2020) and The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire: Reading Revelation with a Postcolonial Womanist Hermeneutics of Ambivalence (Fortress Press, 2014). Smith continually works to enhance the status of women in the profession, mentors students so they can reach their greatest potential, and publishes works that will further New Testament scholarship by inciting others to engage.
Srdjan Sremac is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and Co-Director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion, The Netherlands. His interdisciplinary research interests include religion and sexuality, war-related trauma, the lived religion of marginalized groups, material non-Western culture/religion and post-conflict reconciliation studies.
Rachel Starr is Director of Studies (undergraduate programmes) at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham. She completed her doctorate at Instituto Superior Evangélico de Estudios Teológicos in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Recent publications include Reimagining Theologies of Marriage in Contexts of Domestic Violence: When Salvation is Survival (Routledge, 2018) and SCM Studyguide: Biblical Hermeneutics, 2nd edition (SCM Press, 2019).
David Tombs is a lay Anglican theologian and the Howard Paterson Chair Professor of Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand. His work addresses religion, society and ethics, and he has a longstanding interest in contextual and liberation theologies. Originally from the United Kingdom, David previously worked at the University of Roehampton, London, and at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Michael Trainor is Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the Australian Catholic University. His monograph, The Body of Jesus and Sexual Abuse (Wipf and Stock, 2015), offers a way of engaging with the gospel stories of Jesus’ passion and death in the light of institutional sexual abuse.
Carlton Turner