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Shameka Nicole Cathey, Ph.D. is an American politics scholar, focusing on African American Politics. As a scholar-activist, she is working to integrate applied research with social justice issues. She has recently completed a co-authored text on African American LGBTQ politics (expected fall 2020), serves as the co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Caucus of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, a member of American Political Science Association, and a member of American Society for Public Administration. In addition to her scholarly pursuits in American politics, Dr. Cathey is a Master of Divinity student at Vanderbilt University. At VDS, she serves as a fellow of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice and a Public Theology and Racial Justice fellow.

T. Wilson Dickinson teaches theology and is the Director of the Doctor of Ministry and Continuing Education Programs at Lexington Theological Seminary. He is also the director of the Green Good News, an organization educates, cultivates, and organizes Christian communities to follow the ways of justice, joy, and simplicity. He is author of Exercises in New Creation from Paul to Kierkegaard, and The Green Good News: Christ’s Path to Sustainable and Joyful Life. He holds a PhD from Syracuse University, an MDiv from Vanderbilt Divinity School, and is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Francisco Garcia Jr. is a Chicano from Los Angeles, born to Mexican immigrant parents. He is also a priest in the Episcopal Church. Prior to church ministry he worked in the labor movement in various organizing, negotiating, and leadership capacities with workers in both the public and private sectors. His work over the last ten years has focused on congregation-based ministry and interfaith community organizing/advocacy around immigrant rights, housing rights, and racial and economic justice issues. His doctoral research entails developing a theology of organizing rooted in the liberation tradition in order to better equip communities of faith to address the pressing justice issues of our time.

Patrick Trent Greiner is an assistant professor of sociology and public policy studies at Vanderbilt University. His research explores the links between environmental degradation and structural inequality. Through this general lens, Patrick’s work speaks to the ways in which inequality facilitates, and even necessitates, environmental degradations at the international and national level in the contemporary socio-economic context– and vice versa. 

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is a 34 year old, Affrilachian (Black Appalachian), working class woman, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. Ash-Lee is the first black woman Executive Director of the Highlander Research & Education Center, a social justice leadership training school and cultural center founded in 1932. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, they help create spaces — at Highlander and in communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. Ash-Lee is a long-time activist working against environmental racism in central and southern Appalachia, and has fought for workers rights, racial justice, women and LGBTQUIA+ rights, reproductive justice, international human rights, and led-intergenerational social movements across the South. She serves on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly and is a nationally recognized leader in the Movement for Black Lives.

Bridget Hall is a doctoral student in Ethics and Society and a Theology and Practice Fellow at Vanderbilt University. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Emory University Candler School of Theology and a Bachelors of Arts in History and Religion from Greensboro College. Bridget serves as an Ella Baker Trainer for the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School, which provides her the kinds of opportunities to develop and refine a praxis of liberation, care, and justice for children, families, and communities effected structural oppression. Bridget is interested in the intersections of race, class/economics, gender, and violence and the experiences of black children and women. She seeks to develop an ethic of care that addresses the multifaceted and intersectional oppression and violence that black children from economically deprived families and communities face in their everyday lives.

Megan L. Jordan is an artist-activist-scholar in Nashville, TN. Megan is currently a PhD student of sociology at Vanderbilt University where she specializes in power dynamics and organizational culture. Megan is interested in the internal and external conflicts institutional activists face in the current political climate. In addition to being a PhD student of sociology, Megan is also a painter and data visualization artist. She began painting just after the 2016 presidential election. Prior to pursuing art, Megan worked as an organizer with the AFL-CIO in her home state of Alabama. Her paintings tell a story of the twisted internal endeavor of activism she has faced and continues to live. Megan employs her art as a tool to supplement her research and deepen its impact.

Htoi San Lu is a Ph.D. student in Theological Studies and a Theology and Practice Fellow in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she has earned three Masters degrees in theological studies from Union Theological Seminary in New York, Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Kachin Theological College in Myitkyina, Burma/Myanmar. Her research interest is guided by a postcolonial feminist theology through which Htoi explores Kachin diasporic life in the U.S. and around the globe. Born and raised in Burma/Myanmar to a mixed ethnic Kachin and Shan family with different religious backgrounds, she is also interested in the politics of difference and theology of otherness. Her education and ministerial experiences mutually shape her way of doing theology and enhance her awareness of injustice to those who are marginalized and powerless at multiple levels.

Hesron Sihombing is a Ph.D student at the Joint Doctoral Program (JDP) of the University of Denver/Iliff School of Theology. His work focuses on postcolonial public theology and ecological economics which encompasses interdisciplinary methods of postcolonial/decolonial theology, political economy, and environmental studies from an Indonesian-Asian perspective. He holds a B.Th from Abdi Sabda Theological Seminary, Indonesia, and an MA. in Theological Studies from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC). 

 Aaron Stauffer is a recent PhD graduate in Christian social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York. His dissertation, "Organizing Lived Religious Practices for Power: Sacred Values in Broad-based Community Organizing" focuses on the political role of sacred value in broad-based community organizing. Drawing from a tradition of radical democracy, constructive feminist and anti-racist critiques of liberal political theory, and the rising field of “lived religion,” he argues argues for the importance of religious values in the practice of community organizing. His theological interests lie primarily in neo-Augustinian political theology and the influence of John Locke on contemporary political economy and political theology of race. His work draws heavily from the fields of Christian social ethics, political theology, and political philosophy.

Dr. Andrew Thompson is assistant professor of theological ethics, School of Theology, The University of the South and director of the Sewanee Ministry Collaborative, and the Alternative Clergy Training at Sewanee (ACTS) Program. Thompson’s research focuses on environmental and social ethics and the work of ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr. His first book, All My Holy Mountain: A Christian Ethical Response to Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, was published in the fall of 2015 by University Press of Kentucky. He has also written on mission and on religion and place, and has taught ethics, philosophy, and world religions.

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