Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement CEIE Scholarship & Scholars

Susan Abraham is Professor of Theology and Postcolonial Cultures, VP of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Pacific School of Religion. She is the author of Identity, Ethics, and Nonviolence in Postcolonial Theory: A Rahnerian Theological Assessment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and co-editor of Shoulder to Shoulder: Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology (Fortress, 2009). 

Professor, author, thought coach, and multi-media personality, Rt. Rev. Edward Donalson III, DMin is a visionary with a dynamic message of empowerment. Born in Philadelphia, PA and cultivated in Seattle, WA as a bi-coastal youth, he developed a heart for diversity and an ability to navigate all socioeconomic, educational, and ethnic spheres. Traveling nationally as a guest lecturer, workshop clinician, and preacher since 1996, he is a constructive theologian with a liberative lens. His scholarship centers intersectional theology as an emerging discipline. 

Jaisy A. Joseph is an Assistant Professor of Systematic/Constructive Theology at Villanova University and a Fellow at the Louisville Institute (2018-2020). With interests primarily in ecclesiology and theological anthropology, her main areas of research involve understandings of unity and difference in the Catholic church, how these definitions have shifted over the centuries, and how erroneous expressions have wounded the bonds of communion between different peoples.

A historian and theologian, Killen’s scholarship focuses on Catholicism in North America, religion and spirituality in the Pacific Northwest, theological reflection, and, mission and identity in faith-inspired higher education. She researches the intersection of social context, community, and spirituality, exploring how, in differing social contexts, communities “think” with the wisdom of their religious heritage to address the challenges and novel circumstances of their time.

Kristi Lee is an Associate Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Seattle University. In her role, she teaches a human development course using service-learning and has collaborated on over 70 community-based projects with students and community partners. Kristi is the director of the Academic Service-Learning Faculty Fellows Program which trains faculty in the pedagogy of service-learning. In addition, Kristi serves on the leadership team of the SU ADVANCE grant that is working to bring equity to faculty promotion guidelines for women and faculty of color. 

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, at the University of Florida and a past President of the American Academy of Religion (2001-2002). She was educated at the Universities of Madras and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University. Her fields of interest are the Hindu traditions in India, Cambodia, and America; visual and expressive cultures in the study of the Hindu traditions; and gender issues. She is currently working on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia.

Jodi O'Brien is currently a Professor of Sociology, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Seattle University and the Director of SU ADVANCE, a university-wide, National Science Foundation-funded program for the advancement of women and minoritized faculty. She teaches and conducts scholarship across a wide range of fields including cultural studies, critical race scholarship, gender/transgender studies, liberation sociology, religion, and social psychology.

Born and raised in the Pittsburgh area of southwest Pennsylvania, I was raised on a farm and enjoy hiking in the great outdoors and the spiritual strength that it implicitly shelters. Interested in religious life, I entered the Jesuits in 1983 and was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1996. My academic and ministerial focus is on bridging the religious, cultural, and linguistic depths of the human spirit and experience.

Anantanand Rambachan is Professor of Religion at Saint Olaf College, Minnesota. He was also Visiting Professor at the Academy for the Study of World Religions at the University of Hamburg in Germany (2013-2017).  His books include: Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Shankara, The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Authority of the Vedas, The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity, A Hindu Theology of Liberation and Essays in Hindu Theology. 

Mona Siddiqui joined the University of Edinburgh’s Divinity school in December 2011 as the first Muslim to hold a Chair in Islamic and Interreligious Studies. She also holds the posts of Assistant Principal for Religion and Society and Dean international for the Middle-East at the University.  Her research areas are primarily in the field of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and ethics and Christian-Muslim relations. Amongst her publications are, 50 Ideas in Islam (Quercus, 2016),Hospitality in Islam: Welcoming in God’s Name (Yale UP, 2015), My Way: A Muslim Woman's Journey (IB Tauris, 2014), Christians, Muslims and Jesus (Yale University Press, 2013) and The Good Muslim: Reflections on Classical Islamic Law and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2012). 

Jim Spickard recently retired after 31 years of teaching at the University of Redlands. Most of his courses were in sociology and anthropology, particularly social theory, the sociology of religion, social inequality, the American class system, international development, and social science research design. He also taught in the programs of religious studies, environmental studies, and visual/media studies.

In July 2021, Michael Trice was appointed to the directorship and professorship at the Seattle University Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement as its founding director. Trice is a Faculty-Administrator who is a professionally trained theologian with demonstrated experience in leading outcome-based teams at the axis of public theology in society. Rooted in both interdisciplinarian and integrationist methodologies, Trice has a strong interest in responding to the theological challenges of our world today. 

Nathanael Vette is a British-Australian scholar of Early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism, with a special focus on the Gospels and Jewish-Gentile relations in the first-century ce. He is currently the Issachar Fund Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. His first two publications Gratitude: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, expected Cambridge University Press, and the monograph Writing with Scripture: Scripturalized Narrative in the Gospel of Mark, forthcoming with Bloomsbury T&T Clark, are both anticipated for 2021.