2025 JGC Graduate Scholar Symposium

Mathew Schmalz: Organizer and Lead Respondent

Mathew Schmalz is Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. He received his BA from Amherst College and his PhD in history of religions from the University of Chicago. He lived in India for four years total as a student and researcher. Schmalz has been awarded Century, Watson, Fulbright-Hays, and American Institute of Indian
Studies, fellowships. He has published nearly one hundred academic articles and chapters, essays, encyclopedia entries, and reviews that engage global Catholicism, Catholic theology and spirituality, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Watchtower movement (Jehovah’s Witnesses).
Schmalz is co-editor of Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (SUNY, 2012, with Peter Gottschalk) and is, with co-editor Thomas Landy, presently working on a sixty-chapter reference volume entitled The Catholic World, contracted for the “Worlds” series published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis Press. Schmalz has also authored a memoir, Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life Changing Gift (OSV, 2016) and, with co-author Alonzo Gaskill of Brigham Young University, written Understanding Our Catholic Neighbors: A Guide for Latter Saints (Cedar Fort 2024). In addition to being the founding and executive editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism, Schmalz serves or has served on the editorial boards of Asian Horizons, Ethnologia Polonia, Christian Higher Education, Brill’s Global Catholicism Series, and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

Brent Howitt Otto, S.J.: Organizer

Brent Otto S.J. is a historian of modern South Asia and an eager researcher, writer, and teacher. He specializes in colonial and post-colonial South Asia, with research interests in the social histories of race and caste difference, Indian Christianity, missionaries, and education. With a commitment to interdisciplinary work between social scientists and historians, Brent has engaged in several collaborative research projects that engage the lived religious lives of communities in India, and he co-edits the interdisciplinary mixed-race studies journal, the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. He is a PhD Candidate in the History of South Asia at UC Berkeley, in the final stages of his dissertation. Having graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 2001 with a degree in history, Brent pursued a career in secondary school teaching before joining the Jesuits. As a Jesuit, Brent has studied in New York City, London, and Berkeley, CA, researched in India, and ministered in Mexico, Jamaica, Atlanta, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Besides the academic work of research and teaching, Brent finds the ministries of spiritual direction and preaching to be particularly life-giving.
Brent acts as the managing editor for the Journal of Global Catholicism, as well as planning, organizing, and hosting McFarland Center events.

Thomas M. Landy: Host

Thomas M. Landy, a sociologist with a specialization in the sociology of religion and Catholicism, is director of the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross. His primary research is in global Catholicism, and he founded and leads research for Catholics & Cultures, a web-based initiative to explore the religious lives and practices of lay Catholics in their particular cultural contexts around the world. He is the director and publisher of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Anita Houck: Lead Respondent

A former high-school teacher and parish pastoral minister, Anita Houck is Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she holds the Joyce McMahon Hank Aquinas Chair in Catholic Theology. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago and an Ed.M. in teaching and curriculum from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Anita is former Director of Saint Mary’s Writing Proficiency Program and teaches courses on interfaith studies, spirituality and comedy, and vocational exploration, and she has received the College Theology Society’s Monika Hellwig Award for Teaching Excellence. Her articles and talks cover a range of topics, especially religion and humor, vocation, and pedagogy; and she is co-editor, with Mary Doak, of Translating Religion.

Katherine Ajibade: Participant

Katherine Ajibade is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), funded by an ESRC Studentship and an award from the Theological Trust at King’s College London (KCL). Prior to beginning her PhD, Katherine worked as a researcher for Theos, Britain’s leading religion and society think tank. Katherine holds an MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World) from LSE and a BA in Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics from King’s College London. Her doctoral research focuses on religious identity and pluralism in Senegal. Between 2021 and 2023, she conducted 22 months of fieldwork in Senegal, and she is currently developing her thesis, which provides an ethnographic exploration of the country’s diverse religious identities and practices.

Gabrielle Bibeau: Participant

Gabrielle (Gabby) Bibeau is a second-year Theology PhD student at Fordham University. Her primary research interest is French Catholic women’s spirituality and religious experience in the Nineteenth-Century. Gabby's other research interests are Marian piety, devotions, and religious movements; the intersection between art, spirituality, and popular culture; women’s religious life; and mystical theology. Gabby was fortunate to be in formation as a Marianist Sister for several years after graduating college, and she is currently a committed Lay Marianist. Gabby's relationship with the Marianists and experience as a Catholic sister is where much of her interest in Mary, France, and Nineteenth-Century Catholicism originated, particularly in her prior work as a Research and Program Assistant at the North American Center for Marianist Studies in Dayton, OH.

Claudia ElDIb: Participant

Claudia ElDIb is currently an Arizona State University PhD Candidate. Her work focuses on the introduction of media technology and propaganda by missionaries in Rwandan society during the colonial era, to understand the social impact of these instruments in Rwandan society. She has presented her work at conferences in the United States and Africa, during which she emphasized the role of media technology in the conduct of genocide.

Alex Gruber: Participant

Alex Gruber is a second-year PhD student in Fordham University's Department of Theology. He focuses on modern historical theology, specifically the U.S. history of the Norbertine or Premonstratensian Order of Canons Regular and Norbertine interactions with Indigenous communities like the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Alex completed his bachelor’s at St. Norbert College (SNC) in 2018 and his master’s at Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry in 2020. Alex has written for America Magazine, US Catholic, and the Catholic Historical Review.

Mideum Hong: Participant

Mideum Hong is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His research focuses on global Catholicism and its interaction with local cultural and religious communities, particularly in Asia. He is especially interested in material culture and lived religion, the theology of inculturation, and Buddhist-Christian and Confucian-Christian studies. Mideum's thesis explores the contested interpretation of filial piety between Confucians and Catholics in late Ming and early Qing China and late Joseon Korea, with a special emphasis on ancestral rites and tablets.
Before coming to Georgetown, Mideum completed a Master of Divinity at Princeton Theological Seminary and both his undergraduate and master's degrees at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.

Anna Nicholls: Participant

Anna Nicholls is a PhD student at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in the Study of Religion. She spent a number of years working in the education sector in secondary schools in New Zealand and Samoa, before leading formation programmes for adults in the areas of heritage and spirituality for Mercy International Association. Anna has been a member of Ngā Whaea Atawhai o Aotearoa for over twenty-five years and values the experiences and insights that this has contributed to her understanding of Catherine McAuley as a religious and cultural figure.

In This Section

2025 JGC Graduate Scholar Symposium

Morning Session

Afternoon Session