2025 Speakers

Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science, and Religion
Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Lousiville  
(Louisville, KY) 

David Buckley is associate professor of political science and the Paul Weber Endowed Chair in Politics, Science, and Religion at the University of Louisville, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Asian Democracy. His research focuses on the comparative relationship between religion and democracy. He was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow (2016-17), serving as senior advisor in the Department of State’s Office of Religion in Global Affairs.

His first book, Faithful to Secularism: The Religious Politics of Democracy in Ireland, Senegal and the Philippines (Columbia University Press, 2017), received the International Studies Association’s 2018 Book Award for Religion and International Relations. Most recently, he is the author of Blessing America First: Religion, Populism, and Foreign Policy in the Trump Administration (Columbia University Press, 2024). And his next book—on the Catholic Church’s response to Rodrigo Duterte’s Drug War in the Philippines—is under contract with Cambridge University Press.

Conference Presentation—"Protection at the Margins: The Catholic Church and the Drug War in the Philippines"

What hope of protection existed for impoverished communities in the Philippines facing intensive violence during the Drug War of former-president Rodrigo Duterte? This presentation argues that local Catholic actors and infrastructure on the margins of Philippine urban life were one such source of community protection in dark times. Marginality factored into community protection in several ways, including the location of physical religious infrastructure in marginalized urban poor communities and theological commitments to human dignity that challenged populist marginalization of drug users. A variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence indicates that, absent this work on the margins, Philippine communities would have been subject to even more intense populist-inspired violence.

Assistant Teaching Professor of Theology & Religious Studies
Georgetown University
(Washington, DC)

Min-Ah Cho is a writer, researcher, and educator specializing in constructive theology and Christian spirituality, and she teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. Her work critically engages the Christian mystical tradition, feminist and post/decolonial theories, and Asian/Asian American religion, spirituality, and politics.  

Cho focuses on the complex dynamics of conflict, negotiation, and reconciliation between the spirituality of vulnerable and marginalized Christian individuals and the public or institutional representation of religion and theology. Through this lens, she explores how personal faith interacts with broader theological structures, aiming to highlight the voices and experiences of those often excluded from traditional religious narratives. Her latest book is The Silent God and the Silenced: Mysticism and Contemplation Amid Suffering (February 2025, Georgetown University Press). 

Conference Presentation—"Wounds that Bind: Eucharist, Historical Trauma, and South Korea's Pursuit of Democracy"

This presentation explores how historical trauma informs collective responsibility for social justice, focusing on South Korea’s experiences with the Gwangju Uprising (1980) and the Sewol Ferry Disaster (2014). Drawing a parallel with the broken body of Christ in the Eucharist, I will argue that communal wounds can serve as transformative sites for democratic renewal, where memory and mourning ignite political action and social solidarity.  

Edith B. & Arthur E. Earley Associate Professor of Catholic & Latin American Studies
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Wake Forest University School of Divinity
(Winston-Salem, NC)

Elizabeth O'Donnell Gandolfo is the Edith B. and Arthur E. Earley Associate Professor of Catholic and Latin American Studies and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. A constructive theologian rooted in the Catholic tradition, her teaching and research places Christian theology in conversation with human resilience and resistance to vulnerability and violence, especially in contexts of social injustice and ecological degradation. 

Dr. Gandolfo is the author, co-author, or co-editor of multiple articles, book chapters, and books. Her first book, The Power and Vulnerability of Love: A Theological Anthropology, draws on women’s diverse experiences of maternity and natality to construct a theology of suffering and redemption that is anchored in the reality of human vulnerability. She is also co-editor of Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology: Mothering Matters, which brings together theological reflections on mothering by an intergenerational, interracial, and intercultural group of women scholars in theology, bible, and ethics.

Re-membering the Reign of God: The Decolonial Witness of El Salvador’s Church of the Poor, which Dr. Gandolfo co-authored with Laurel Marshall Potter, places the decolonial praxis of the ecclesial base communities of El Salvador in critical conversation with the continued coloniality of Roman Catholic ecclesiology and eschatology. Her most recent book, Ecomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home, accompanied by a website of the same name, reflects theologically on the ecological imaginations and ongoing murders of land and environmental defenders, especially in Latin America.

In addition to her research and writing, Dr. Gandolfo enjoys teaching theology at Wake Div and finds great delight (and challenge) in the many adventures of her other full-time job—raising four adolescent children.  

Conference Presentation—"Wellsprings of Hope: Ecomartyrs in the Fight for Our Common Home"

Hundreds of land and environmental defenders around the world are assassinated each year as a result of their work to protect the earth and its inhabitants from exploitation and destruction by profit-driven, extractivist industries. In the Americas, these defenders of our common home both draw on and feed back into wellsprings of hope that nourish the life-giving roots of their spiritual traditions, including the sacramental imagination of the Catholic tradition.  

This presentation will lift up the witness of several "ecomartyrs" whose leadership for environmental justice in Latin America was rooted in their Catholic spirituality and whose legacies continue to guide their communities and so many others on paths of resistance, care, and hope for our common home. In their lives they fought for social and ecological flourishing that lie at the heart of "Jubilee" and, while their brutal murders represent barriers to hope, their resurrection in the continued struggles of their people can be a wellspring of Jubilee hope for us all. 

Assistant Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture
Affiliate Faculty of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies
Vanderbilt University
(Nashville, TN)

Rev. Dr. Yara González-Justiniano is assistant professor of religion, psychology, and culture with emphasis on Latinx studies at Vanderbilt University, where she also serves as affiliated faculty of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies. She is a practical theologian and minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She received a PhD in theological studies with a concentration in church and society from Boston University School of Theology, where she also received her MDiv. She holds a BA in audiovisual communications from the University of Puerto Rico and double majored in theater and modern languages. Her educational journey of interdisciplinarity informs the ways in which she approaches theological studies. 

Her most recent publication, Centering Hope as a Sustainable Decolonial Practice: Esperanza en Práctica (2022), wrestles with answering the question of what hope looks like amid socioeconomic crises. Her interdisciplinary approach to this inquiry grounds itself in ethnographic research in hopes of finding practices that enable a hope that can sustain the collective. Her teaching philosophy centers on fostering critical thinking, cultural awareness, and empathy among her students, encouraging them to engage deeply with diverse perspectives and approaches to understanding the complex liberative and integral practices that make up the human experience. Her research and teaching interests include Latinx theologies, Latin American liberation theology, ecclesiology and pastoral theologies, memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, popular culture and film, and popular religion and theologies of hope.  

Conference Presentation—"Reasons to Hope: Defiant Joy and Ecclesial Frameworks for a Sustainable Hope"

Gustavo Gutiérrez's hermeneutics of hope understands that theology’s purpose is to articulate reasons to hope. When interpreting hope in service of our communities, hope can be defined as giving what we have in virtue of what can become material. It is the capacity to imagine the means of getting there and embodying it, at times joyfully and at times fragmented. In my study of local Puerto Rican congregations, I identify three ecclesial resources for a sustainable hope: communion, marginality, and the Holy Spirit. I note that centering hope as the motivator of our actions moves us further toward the always-unknown, nonetheless practicing the world that calls forward a new Divine reality.

Associate Pastor & Diocesan Tribunal Judge—Diocese of Speyer (Speyer, Germany)
Visiting Lecturer—Catholic University of West Africa (Lomé, Togo)

Léonard Amossou Katchekpele is a priest from Togo, a theologian, and a canon lawyer. He studied at the University of Strasbourg and is now an associate pastor and the diocesan tribunal judge in the Diocese of Speyer (Germany). In addition, he serves as a member of the editorial board of Concilium: International Journal of Theology, a visiting lecturer at the Catholic University of West Africa (Lomé, Togo), and editor/publisher of Editions Le Masque Noir, based in Togo’s capital of Lomé. He has also been a research fellow at DePaul University’s CWCIT (summer 2023).  

Fr. Katchekpele’s most recent book, co-authored with Benjamin Akotia and published in February 2024, is Les ancêtres et les dieux: L’hospitalité comme problème épistémologique (“Ancestors and Gods: Hospitality as an Epistemological Problem”). His areas of research include political theology, postcolonial and African theology, politics and violence after René Girard, and theological ethics.

Conference Presentation—"When Hope Has No Time: On Hope as a Gift of Conviviality"

Where there seems to be no future to expect, there seems to be no hope. Such is the case, to take but one extreme example, with people requesting or pleading for euthanasia. That is to suggest that our understanding of hope, much like other philosophical concepts, is bound to the way we think and inhabit time. Occasionally living and working with heavily disabled children in Togo (West Africa) makes me wonder what hope could mean for them, for whom no “future” seems to lie ahead. In daring to approach such an experience, I will explore Ivan Illich’s concept of “conviviality” alongside his suggestion that eschatology may hold “a spatial meaning.” There may be another hope, where hope and time end. Perhaps, for those to whom hope is gifted, it is not so much about carving out a space in a distant future but about finding a place to belong and share with some neighbor in the present.

Professor of Theology and Peace Studies—University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN)
Extraordinary Professor of Ecclesiology—University of Stellenbosch (Stellenbosch, South Africa)

Emmanuel Katongole is a Catholic priest, ordained in 1987 for the Archdiocese of Kampala, Uganda, and he holds a PhD in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He serves as professor of theology and peace studies in the Keough School, University of Notre Dame, and as extraordinary professor of ecclesiology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Before joining the University of Notre Dame in 2013, he served as associate professor of theology and world Christianity at Duke University and as founding co-director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation.  

He is the author of numerous books on the Christian social imagination, the crisis of faith following the genocide in Rwanda, and Christian approaches to peace, justice, and reconciliation. Among these are Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing (with Chris Rice; Intervarsity, 2008); The Sacrifice of Africa: A Political Theology for Africa (Eerdmans, 2011), and more recently, Who Are My People? Love, Violence, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022). Additionally, he is co-founder and president of Bethany Land Institute, an educational program in rural Uganda that is dedicated to forming the poor and excluded in the practices, lifestyle, and spirituality of sustainable land care, food production, and economic expertise. 

Conference Presentation—TBA

Professor of Theology
Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná 
(Paraná, Brazil)

Cesar Kuzma holds a PhD in theology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Currently, he is a professor of theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná in Curitiba, Brazil. He was president of SOTER (Brazil’s Society of Theology and Religious Sciences) from 2016-22 and currently serves on the board of the Knowledge Management Center for CELAM (the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Conference). He is also a member of the Permanent Council and the Methodological Committee of the World Forum on Theology and Liberation (WFTL-FTML), and as of 2024, he sits on the boards of Concilium: International Journal for Theology and the Theological Commission of Caritas Latin America and Caribbean.  

His research interests include the following: hope/performativity, theological ethics/bioethics, social issues/human rights, liberation theology, laity/synodality, Pope Francis, politics, migration/refugees, sexual abuse and ethical-pastoral implications, and decoloniality. A speaker and lecturer at various institutions, Cesar is also married and the father of two children. 

Conference Presentation—"Hope, Resistance, and New Possibilities from the Brazilian Reality: Ethical-Theological Implications and Performativity"

This presentation will offer a critical reflection on hope, understood in its human, political, religious, and social aspects, based on different cries, voices, resistances, and expressions, and rereading these hopes within an ethical-theological perspective and as they are practiced. In doing so, I will emphasize different realities and new subjects of this act of hope, with new urgencies, questions, and approximations. I will approach this from a Latin American perspective, specifically Brazilian, in which oppression, vulnerability, and social exclusion present challenges to theological and pastoral practice. Even in the face of such troubles, however, the attentive gaze of hope and Christian commitment invites us to new attitudes and possibilities that can lead us to address these realities and search for liberation. Faced with these challenges, we seek new horizons, in an invitation to new realities and spaces of hope. 

Head of Africa Church Advocacy Programme
Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD)
(London, UK)

With an academic background in sociology focused on power, participation, and social change, Mwila Mulumbi has always been interested in amplifying the voices of women and young people in leadership; the governance of poverty; civil society and civic space; gender justice; and the role of disadvantaged citizens in holding public authorities to account, among other issues. Through her previous roles as executive director of the Civil Society for Poverty Reduction and as a country representative for CAFOD in Zambia, Ms. Mulumbi has led numerous projects aimed at enhancing sustainable development, tackling barriers to equity, and fostering community empowerment.  

She has worked with researchers from around the world, and some of her research interests have focused on addressing critical questions about poverty, inequality, and power in relation to inclusive development. Previously, she was involved through the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University in a four-year, real-time research project aimed at understanding how the everyday aspects of people’s lives were responding to global economic shocks. Her writings from this research include “Eat With Us: Insight into Household Food Habits in a Time of Food Price Volatility in Zambian Communities” (IDS Bulletin 46.6 2015) and a series of reports including “Zambia: Year 3 Findings from the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility Study” (Oxfam International and IDS, 2014).  

Conference Presentation—"Resisting Despair: How Zambia’s Debt Crisis Fuels the Practice of Hope Through Community Solidarity, Spiritual Resilience, and Advocacy"

Like many countries in Africa, Zambia is burdened by a crippling debt crisis, compounded by the devastating effects of climate change. In the wake of the climate emergency, Zambia, along with other nations, has been forced to borrow heavily at high-interest rates, exacerbating its financial instability. At the same time, the poorest communities—those least responsible for the climate crisis—are bearing the heaviest consequences. Despite being a country deeply impacted by both economic and environmental crises, marginalized communities in Zambia continue to practice hope through a collective resistance to injustice illustrated through community solidarity, spiritual resilience, and grassroots advocacy for social and economic justice, utilizing tools such as the Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket. This resilience becomes a form of resistance to the structural inequalities and economic hardships they face, illustrating that even amidst profound challenges, the spirit of hope can endure. 

Professor of Religious Studies 
Co-Director of the Center for Restorative Justice
West Virginia Wesleyan College
(Buckhannon, WV)

Debra Dean Murphy is professor of religious studies and co-director of the Center for Restorative Justice at West Virginia Wesleyan College. She is the author of Teaching that Transforms: Worship as the Heart of Christian Education (Wipf & Stock, 2007); Happiness, Health, and Beauty: The Christian Life in Everyday Terms (Cascade, 2015); and numerous essays, articles, and book reviews. She is the co-convener of the Society of Christian Ethics’ Liturgy and Ethics Interest Group, as well as co-editor of the Theopolitical Visions Series published by Wipf & Stock.  

Debra is also the coordinator of the Ekklesia Project, a network of Christians and Christian communities across the denominational spectrum committed to their own conversions and to unlearning the habits of Empire. She is a member of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia and All Saints Catholic Church in Bridgeport, WV. Her latest book, Grieving the End of the World: Climate Collapse and Other Breakdowns, is forthcoming from Cascade.  

Conference Presentation—“What Is It Like to Be You in this Place?” Climate Grief and Radical Hope in the Heart of Appalachia 

All grief is local. Yet not all losses are perceived as grievable. For decades, Appalachia has been constructed as a place where the inviolability and grievability of land, water, people, and other creatures have been called into question. “Slow violence” (Rob Nixon) and “organized abandonment” (Ruth Wilson Gilmore) characterize how extractive industries have had their way with us for more than a hundred years. Drawing on Judith Butler’s Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, this presentation examines some of the agents and casualties of human-caused climate trauma in this region, pressing the question of which ruined places and whose ruined lives are worthy of grief. It also highlights the work of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia, whose presence in this place for more than half a century has embodied a transformative vision of creaturely flourishing, insisting that the invisible be made visible, and that hope, as Mariame Kaba reminds us, is a discipline.   

Provincial Superior
Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians), United States
(Franklin, WI)

Fr. Vien V. Nguyen, SCJ, is a priest and the provincial superior of the Priests of the Sacred Heart (Dehonians, or SCJs) in the United States. Holding a doctorate in sacred Scripture from Santa Clara University, Fr. Vien was vice rector, interim vice president of formation programs, and assistant professor of Scripture studies at Sacred Heart Seminary and the School of Theology in Hales Corners, WI, before his election as provincial superior in 2022.  

Born and raised in Vietnam, Fr. Vien emigrated by boat when he was 14 and lived in refugee camps for Vietnamese boat people in the Philippines for two years before reuniting with his family in Houston, TX. He professed his first vows as a religious in 1997 and was ordained to the priesthood in 2004. In the field of Scripture studies, Fr. Nguyen's research interests include ethnicity, spatiality, and masculinity.  

Conference Presentation—"The Kingdom of God: From Scripture to Social Justice"

The Kingdom of God is a central theme in Scripture. In the Old Testament, the Kingdom of God denotes divine sovereignty over creation and nations, as well as the divine plan to restore humanity to its original creative purpose, marked by justice and peace. In the New Testament, the Kingdom of God is heralded as “at hand,” with Jesus as the Davidic kingly messiah who fulfills the Old Testament expectations of God’s reign or kingdom. This paper explores the theme of the Kingdom of God in Scripture. It emphasizes the significance of the theme and its connection to Catholic social teaching, which challenges believers to live responsibly and build a just society. 

Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies
Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Keough School of Global Affairs
University of Notre Dame
(Notre Dame, IN)

Atalia Omer is a professor of religion, conflict, and peace studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She also recently served as a senior fellow and Dermot TJ Dunphy Visiting Professor at the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at Harvard University’s Religion and Public Life program. She earned her PhD in religion, ethics, and politics (2008) from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. Her research focuses on religion, violence, and peacebuilding, as well as theories and methods in the study of religion.  

Omer was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017, resulting in the book, Decolonizing Religion and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2023). Among other publications, she is also the author of When Peace is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding (Oxford University Press, 2015). 

Conference Presentation—"Jewish Interrogation of Jewish Violence in Palestine/Israel: The Yeshivah of Unlearners"

Based on in-depth interviews, the presentation will focus on explicitly religious anti-occupation critics of the mainstreaming of Jewish power and religious Zionism. Examining Jewish learning and unlearning, I will trace how these religious activists conceptualize Zionism, Palestinian ethical claims, Jewish power, and democracy and how they challenge messianic-kahanist accounts of the land, Jewish power, and Jewish meanings. Unlike secular activists, their solidarity actions are also informed by an urgency to reclaim the Jewish tradition from what they deem as its misinterpretations manifested in the mainstreaming of messianic and dominating theologies of ethnoreligious-centric political sovereignty.  

Professor of Systematic Theology & Culture
Vatican Council II Chair of Theology
Catholic Theological Union (CTU)
(Chicago, IL)

A professed Catholic religious brother of the Society of the Precious Blood (CPPS), U.S. Province, Antonio D. Sison is committed to contextual, intercultural, and aesthetic approaches to doing systematic theology. He has written several books including The Art of Indigenous Inculturation: Grace on the Edge of Genius (Orbis, 2021), a critical and creative exploration of the phenomenon of inculturation from the perspective of postcolonial religious cultures of the global South. Among the book’s original proposals is a hermeneutics of serendipity, a liberative approach to inculturation where the “epiphany of surprise and sagacity” is purposefully considered as “the nexus of the divine-human encounter.” His follow-up book within the research area (as editor and contributing author), Deep Inculturation: Global Voices on Christian Faith and Indigenous Genius (Orbis, 2024), is an anthology on the variegated facets of inculturation born out of the creative and often heroic faith of underrepresented communities around the globe.  

Br. Sison has spoken globally in a number of venues, including invited teaching outreaches at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and Saint Joseph Jesuit Scholasticate in Saigon, Vietnam. He was the featured keynote lecturer for Chicago Field Museum’s Anthropology Department and Cathedral Filipino Network (CFN) 2022 co-curation initiative in Chicago; the 2018 Association for Southeast Asian Cinemas (ASEAC) international conference in Yogyakarta, Indonesia; and Paradojas de lo liminal: Cine y teología, 2018 Film and Theology Colloquium, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City.   

Conference Presentation—Inculturation and the Epiphany of Surprise: Serendipitous Currents in Mexican and Filipino Catholic Faith

Focusing on inculturation in religio-cultural contexts historically linked by the scarlet thread of Spanish Conquest, the study explores “serendipity,” the fortuitous alignment of historical circumstance and indigenous sagacity, as the nexus for the divine-human encounter. How has serendipity kindled ironic emancipatory currents that allowed for the flourishing of the local culture’s creative genius in the face of colonial curtailment and its postcolonial ghostlife? What are the continuing implications of serendipitous currents in the pilgrimage toward a reconciling, hope-inspiring inculturation? Vivid exemplars of inculturated Catholic faith expressions from Mexico and the Philippines serve as loci theologici, sites for theological discovery and insight.