Graduate Student Placement

2022

Elizabeth Dolfi, PhD
Tutor
Cambridge Coaching
Dissertation: Trafficking in Restoration: Building God's Kingdom in the Evangelical Anti-Trafficking Movement

Yanchen Liu, PhD
Lecturer
Chinese University, Hong Kong
Dissertation: Investigating the Margins: Bernard of Parma's Glossa ordinaria on Religious Marginality in the High Middle Ages

Ebadur Rahman, PhD
Adjunct Professor
Department of Religion
Religious Life Associate for Muslim Life
Columbia University
Dissertation: The Stories of Joseph and the Cave: Reading Modern Qur'anic Commentaries in the United States

Nick Tackes, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Religious Studies
Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
Dissertation: Everyday Eschatology: Centering and Healing in Two Hindu Sects

2021

Hillel Horacio Athias-Robles, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Religious Studies
Fairfield University, Fairfield CT
Dissertation: Occupying Space: The Public Life of Africana Religions in New York

Quinn Alexander Clark, PhD
Lecturer Department of Religion
Director, MA program, South Asian Institute
Columbia University
Dissertation: “Dīn and Duniyā: Debating Sufism, Shrines, and Money in the Lucknow Area”

Zachary Domach, PhD
Visiting Lecturer 
Arts & Science College Core Curriculum
Office of Teaching Excellence & Innovation
New York University
Dissertation: "Recycled Wisdom: Maxims and Meaning Making in Late Antique and Medieval Christianity"

Andrew Jungclaus, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Columbia University
Dissertation: True Philanthropy: A Religious History of the Secular Non-Profit Family Foundation

Verena Meyer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Islam in South and Southeast Asia
Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
Dissertation: Memory and Difference: Coherence and Paradox in Javanese Muslims' Stories of the Past

Guy St. Amant, PhD
Link-Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows
Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Religion
Lecturer in the Department of Religion
Princeton University
Dissertation: The Early Historical Semantics of Śruti

Dessislava Vendova, PhD
The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Dissertation: The Great Life Story of the Body of Buddha: Re-examination and Re-assessment of the Images and Narratives of the Life of Buddha Shakyamuni

2020

Mark Balmforth, PhD
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Historical and Cultural Studies
University of Toronto Scarborough
Dissertation: Schooling the Master: Caste Supremacy and American Education in British Ceylon, 1795–1855

Alessandro Poletto, PhD
Lecturer in East Asian Religions
Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Washington University, St. Louis
Dissertation: The culture of healing in early medieval Japan: a microhistorical study in premodern epistemology

Jay Ramesh, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor 
Religious Studies Department
Claremont McKenna College, Pomona, CA
Dissertation: Abodes of Siva: Monuments and Memory in Medieval and Early Modern South Indian Puranas

2019

Rex Delno Barnes III, PhD
Teaching Faculty
St. Mark's School, Southborough, MA
Dissertation: Haunting Matters: Demonic Infestation in Northern Europe, 1400-1600

Andrew Macomber, PhD
Assistant Professor
East Asian Religions
Departments of Religion and East Asian Studies
Oberlin College
Dissertation Title: Esoteric Moxibustion for Demonic Disease: Efficacy and Ritual Healing in Medieval Japanese Buddhism

Elizabeth Tinsley, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of East Asian Studies
University of California, Irvine
Dissertation Title: Dharma Possession: Daishi Myōjin and the Roles of Gods and Past Masters in the Preservation of Teachings at Premodern Kōyasan

2018

Krista Dalton, PhD
Associate Professor of Religious and Jewish Studies
Religion Department
Kenyon College, Gambier, OH
Dissertation: Rabbis and Donors: On the Logics of Giving in the Ancient Mediterranean

Cara Rock-Singer, PhD
Assistant Professor
Religious Studies
University of Wisconsin
Dissertation Title: Prophetesses of the Body: American Jewish Feminism and the Politics of Embodied Knowledge 

Shana Sippy, PhD
Associate Professor of Religion 
Chair of Asian Studies
Centre College, Danville, KY
Dissertation Title: Diasporic Desires: Making Hindus and the Cultivation of Longing 

Zachary Ugolnik, PhD
Program Director
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University
Dissertation: The Mirror of Glory: Sense and Subjectivity in Near Eastern Mysticism

2017

Hasan Azad, PhD
Dissertation: (Im)Possible Muslims: Hizb Ut-Tahrir, The Islamic State and Modern Muslimness 

Daniel Manfred del Nido, PhD
Assistant Director
Education Program
Tanenbaum
Dissertation: Just like Nature: Habit and the Art of Life

Laura McTighe, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Religion
Florida State University
Dissertation Title: 'This Day, We Use Our Energy for Revolution': Black Feminist Ethics of Survival, Struggle, and Renewal in the New New Orleans 

2016

Sajida Jalalzai, PhD
Assistant Professor
Trinity University, San Antonio, TX
Department of Religion
Dissertation: Translating Islamic Authority: Chaplaincy and Muslim Leadership Education in North American Protestant Seminaries 

Simran Singh, PhD
Executive Director of the Religion & Society Program
The Aspen Institute
Dissertation: The Life of the Puratan Janamsakhi: Tracing the Earliest Memories of Guru Nanak 

Michael Wolfe, PhD
Tutor (Tenured Faculty)
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Dissertation: The World Could Not Contain the Pages: A Sufi Reading of the Gospel of John Based on the Writings of Muhyi Al-Din Ibn Al-'Arabi (1165- 1240 Ce)

2015

Joseph Blankholm, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
Dissertation: Making the American Secular: An Ethnographic Study of Organized Nonbelievers and Secular Activists in the United States 

Joel Bordeaux, PhD
Guest Researcher
Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
Researcher, Body and Embodiment in the Middle Bengali Imaginary
Institute for the Study of Religions
Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Dissertation: The Mythic King: Raja Krishnacandra and Early Modern Bengal

Liane Carlson, PhD
Associate Director
Institutional Funding and Sponsored Research 
Barnard College
Dissertation: Contingency and the Limits of History: How Touch Shapes Experience and Meaning

Andrea Castiglioni, PhD
Associate Professor
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Nagoya City University, Japan
Dissertation: Ascesis and Devotion: The Mount Yudono Cult in Early Modern Japan

Christopher Kelley, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
The New School, New York and
Pacificac Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA
Dissertation: Toward a Buddhist Philosophy and Practice of Human Rights 

Matthew Pereira, PhD
Teaching Assistant Professor
History Department (largely teaches courses in the Religious Studies Program)
Oklahoma State University
Dissertation:  Reception, Interpretation, and Doctrine in the Sixth Century: John Maxentius and the Scythian Monks 

Drew Thomases, PhD
Associate Professor; Department Chair
Department for the Study of Religion
San Diego State University
Dissertation: Making Pushkar Paradise: Religion, Tourism, and Belonging in a North Indian Pilgrimage Town 

Anand Venkatkrishnan, PhD
Assistant Professor, History of Religion in South Asia
Division of the Humanities, South Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago
Preceptor in Sanskrit
Department of South Asian Studies
Harvard University
Dissertation: Mimamsa, Vedanta, and the Bhakti Movement 

2014

Ari Bergmann, PhD
Managing Principal, CIO
Penso Advisors, LLC
Dissertation: Halevy, Halivni, and the Oral Formation of the Babylonian Talmud 

Yonatan Brafman, PhD
Assistant Professor, Modern Judiaism
Department of Religion
Tufts University, Medford, MA
Dissertation: Critical Philosophy of Halakha (Jewish Law): The Justification of Halakhic Norms and Authority 

Todd French, PhD
Associate Professor of Religion
Rollins College, Winterpark, FL
Dissertation:  Just Deserts: Losing Origen and Gaining Retributive Judgment in the Hagiographical Literature of the Early Byzantine World 

Elana Stein, PhD
Rosh Beit Midrash and Senior Research Fellow
Shalom Hartman Institute of North America
Dissertation: Rabbinic Legal Loopholes: Formalism, Equity, and Subjectivity 

Hsuan-Li Wang, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
National Taiwan University
Dissertation: Gushan: The Formation of a Chan Lineage During the Seventeenth Century and its Spread to Taiwan 

2013

Susan Andrews, PhD
Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions
Mount Allison University
Dissertation: Representing Mount Wutai's Past: A Study of Chinese and Japanese Miracle Tales about the Five Terrace Mountain 

Todd Berzon, PhD
Peter M. Small Associate Professor of Religion, Religious Studies; Department Chair
Bowdoin College,Brunswich, ME
Dissertation: Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Discovery, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity 

Joshua Eisen, PhD
President
Tekademic Translation Services
Dissertation: Stammaitic Activity Versus Stammaitic Chronology: Anonymity's Impact on the Legal Narrative of the Babylonian Talmud 

Benjamin Fong, PhD
Associate Teaching Professor & Honors Faculty Fellow, Barrett, the Honors College
Associate Director, Center for Work and Democracy
Arizona State University
Dissertation: The Death Drive Revisited: A Reexamination of Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and Its Implications for Critical Theory 

Joseph McClellan, PhD
Teacher
Southeast Asian Program
Pre-Collegiate Program of Yangon, Myanmar
Dissertation: Poisoned Ground: The Roots of Eurocentrism: Teleology, Hierarchy, and Anthropocentrism 

Heather Ohaneson, PhD
Associate Faculty
Ancient Philosophy, 19th Century Thought, Virtue Ethics
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Dissertation: Free To Play: An Analysis in Aesthetic, Ethical, and Religious Movements 

Gregory Scott, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Chinese Cultural History
University of Manchester
Dissertation: Conversion by the Book: Buddhist Print Culture in Early Republican China 

Frank Shepard, PhD
Associate Faculty
Religion, Cybernetics, Software and Platform Studies
Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Part-time Assistant Professor
The New School, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts 
Dissertation: The Sickness unto Life: Nietzsche's Diagnosis of the Christian Condition 

Michelle Sorensen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Religion
Western Carolina University
Dissertation: Making the Old New Again and Again: Legitimation and Innovation in the Tibetan Buddhist Chod Tradition 

Hamsa Stainton, PhD
Associate Professor
School of Religious Studies
McGill University
Dissertation: Poetry and Prayer: Stotras in the Religious and Literary History of Kashmir  

Gheorghita Zugravu, PhD
Priest
St. George Greek Orthodox Cathedral
Dissertation: Kassia the Melodist and the Making of a Byzantine Hymnographer 

2012

Patton Burchett, PhD
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
College of William and Mary
Tutor
Oxford Center for Hindu Studies Online
Dissertation: Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvahas, Ramamandis, and Naths, Circa 1500-1750 

Ehud Halperin, PhD
Lecturer
Department of East Asian Studies
Tel Aviv University
Dissertation: Hadimba Becoming Herself: A Himalayan Goddess in Change 

Abigail Kluchin, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Ursinus College, Collegeville, PA
Dissertation: The Allure of Affect: Rigor, Style, and Unintelligibility in Kristeva and Irigaray 

Daniel Vaca, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Religious Studies
Brown University
Dissertation: Book People: Evangelical Books and the Making of Contemporary Evangelicalism

2011

Mimi Hanaoka, PhD
Associate Professor of Religious Studies in Islam
University of Richmond
Dissertation: Umma and Identity in Early Islamic Persia 

James Hare, PhD
Dissertation: The Garland of Devotees: Nabhadas' Bhaktamal and Modern Hinduism 

Jon Keune, PhD
Associate Professor
South Asian Religions
Michigan State University
Dissertation: Conversion by the Book: Buddhist Print Culture in Early Republican China 

David Kittay, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Religion
Columbia University
Director and Professor, Philosophy
Harlem Clemente Course for Humanities
Dissertation: Interpreting the Vajra Rosary: Truth and Method Meets Wisdom and Method 

Yung-Fen Ma, PhD
Buddhist Nun and Abbess
Buddhist Center, Philippines
Dissertation: The Revival of Tiantai Buddhism in the Late Ming: On the Thought of Youxi Chuandeng (1544-1628) 

Roy Tzohar, PhD
Associate Professor in East and South Asian Studies
el Aviv University
Dissertation: Metaphor (Upacara) in Early Yogacara Thought and Its Intellectual Context 

2010

Jared Calaway, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor
Religion Department, Illinois Wesleyan University
Dissertation: Heavenly Sabbath, Heavenly Sanctuary: The Transformation of Priestly Sacred Space and Sacred Time in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Epistle to the Hebrews 

Rosemary Corbett (Hicks), PhD
Faculty Fellow
Bard Prison Initiative
Dissertation: Creating an 'Abrahamic' America and Moderating Islam: Cold War Political Economy and Cosmopolitan Sufi Muslims in New York After 2001 

Erika Dyson, PhD
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Harvey Mudd College
Dissertation: Spiritualism and Crime: Negotiating Prophecy and Police Power at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 

2009

Varuni Bhatia, PhD
Associate Professor
Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
Dissertation: Devotional Traditions and National Culture: Recovering Gaudiya Vaishnavism in Colonial Bengal 

John Campbell, PhD
Teacher
Tibet House US
Director, Sanskrit Projects
Asian Classics Input Project
Dissertation: Vajra Hermeneutics: A Study of Vajrayana Scholasticism in the Pradipoddyotana 

Wen-Ling Jane, PhD
Buddhist Nun
Buddhist College of Zhongtai Mountain
Dissertation: Practice and Theory of Emptiness: A Study of Jizang's Commentary on the "Refutation of Emptiness" of the Bailun 

Annabella Pitkin, PhD 
Associate Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Dissertation: Like Pouring Water into Water: Buddhist Lineages, Modernity, and the Continuity of Memory in the Twentieth-Century History of Tibetan Buddhism 

2008

Andrea Pinkney, PhD
Associate Professor of South Asian Religions
School of Religious Studies
McGill University
Dissertation: The Sacred Share: Prasada in South Asia