Students

Nicholas is a second year MA student at the CSR, studying Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism. He completed his Bachelors degree at U of T in 2010, specializing in the study of religion. His research interests include Esoteric Buddhist ritual, the Dunhuang manuscript cache, the Tibetan empire, and Silk Road studies. He is also a member [...]

Ben Wood completed a BA in Asian Religions from McGill University and an MA in Buddhist Studies from SOAS before beginning his doctoral studies at the University of Toronto in 2006. Ben’s research focuses on narratives of cosmologies, or states or planes of existence, in Indian and Tibetan literature. He is currently completing a project [...]

Victoria received a B.A. in Religious Studies and English Literature from McGill University in 2007. Since then, she has traveled extensively through Europe and Asia and this year, she begins her graduate work at the Centre for the Study of Religion towards an MA in Buddhist Studies. Her research interests include sacred geography, mythology, local [...]

Luiz received his MA in Religious Sciences from Universidade Metodista de São Paulo, Brazil. In his Master’s dissertation he pursued the Second Temple Jewish Imaginary of Heavenly Ascent and Celestial Temple and its impact on Christian Origins.  In his PhD, Luiz Felipe is occupied with more earthly pursuits. Researching under the advisory of Prof. John [...]

Dominican religious thought and pastoral training in the 13-14th cent.

Mourad joined the Centre for the Study of Religion in 2008/2009. His doctoral research examines the interplay of reason and imagination in the works of Ibn al-’Arabi and Kant as it pertains to their treatment of ethics. He holds two MAs, respectively in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and in Cultural [...]

My research focuses on conservative Christianity in Canada and its interaction with the political sphere. I look primarily at Christian lobby groups in Canada and how they relate to and are affected by the Canadian state. My research intersects with three main areas: (i) contemporary conservative Christianity, including its social-historical [...]

T. Nicholas Schonhoffer completed a BSc (Mathematics) and BA (Religious Studies) at the University of Regina, before completing an MA from the University of Toronto. He is currently in the third year of the PhD program. His research interests include Christian Origins, Gnosticism, Post-Colonialism, and Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.

I completed my BA Honours and MA in Religious Studies at University of Alberta. My primary areas of research and specialization are recollection, retelling, historiography, and responses to trauma and destruction in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. More specifically, I explore both the connection between memory and narrative and the ways in which identities and [...]

Jade Weimer completed a BSc, a BA and an MA from the University of Manitoba and is currently a fourth-year PhD student at the Centre for the Study of Religion in the area of Christian origins. She studies liturgical and social history of the early Christian communities of Mediterranean antiquity and focuses her research on [...]

David Kaden is a PhD student in Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity with a focus in early Christianity.  His research interests include textual criticism, conceptions of law in antiquity, Stoicism, postcolonialism, and Foucauldian discourse analysis.  David comes to the Department from Harvard.

Smita Kothari received her B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Toronto in 2004 and her collaborative M.A. in Religion and South Asian Studies focusing on a comparative study of violence in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Sauptikaparvan (the sixth and tenth book of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata) from the University of Toronto. [...]

I am a second year PhD candidate at the Centre. My interests and areas of research include theodicy, the Holocaust, and Holocaust Theology. My project explores theories regarding the particularity, newness, or uniqueness of the evil which was exemplified or experienced throughout the Holocaust, and the implications this brings for philosophical and theological attempts to [...]

My research examines contemporary liberal Christians in North America and their consumption of popularised theologies based upon historical Jesus scholarship. In particular, I am interested in the anthropology of Christianity, the sociology of knowledge and intellectuals, as well as the role of religion within the public sphere. My methodological approach to this study is an [...]

Dianna  received her MA in Religion from the University of Toronto. Her MA major research paper explored philosophical concepts in medieval Hebrew ethical wills. Dianna is a third year PhD candidate at the Centre and Department for the Study of Religion and a collaborative graduate at the Centre for Jewish Studies. Her doctoral research focuses [...]

Eva is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Religion and Jewish Studies. Her dissertation, Making the Psalms: Ancient Concepts of Textual Tradition in Psalms and Related Texts, discusses early Jewish book culture in a pre-codex world, showing how writing and text production was imagined in Second Temple Judaism through the example of an unusual Psalms [...]

Paul York is a fifth year doctoral candidate. His area of study is Kant’s philosophy of religion and environmental ethics. Favourite philosophers include Paul Tillich, Immanuel Levinas, James Rachels, Thomas Berry and Allen Wood. Paul is also interested in animals and religion, philosophy of science, engaged Buddhism and eco-theology. His dissertation is on Kant’s Religion [...]

Michelle is in the PhD program. Her primary interest is early Christianity.

Sarah Kleeb is a Ph.D. Candidate with the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion. Her research examines connections between religion and certain forms of dissent or protest, and the potential limits of dialogue within particular structures of religious authority. Consideration of these issues is grounded in the theoretical works of Frankfurt [...]

Shari Golberg is a 4th year PhD student in Religion, Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies. Her work explores feminist approaches to classical religious texts in Judaism and Islam and contemporary text-based collaborations between Jewish and Muslim women. When Shari isn’t attending to grad-schooly things, she’s running after her little hurricaine of a son, [...]

Richard is PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion. His dissertation challenges the widespread assumption that becoming a Pauline Christ-believer led to a life of relative isolation, social and ecclesiastical egalitarianism, and disdain for worldly pleasure.  In Richard’s dissertation, he argues that the very structure of Paul’s Corinthian congregation cultivated affiliates’ desires [...]

I am a Haitian-Canadian coming to the CSR from The Toronto School of Theology. My areas of research and interests are early Christian literature, social history of earliest Christianity, Second Temple Judaism, and postcolonial studies. My anticipated dissertation is: Paul in the Diaspora: A Postcolonial Argument. The aim of this project is to find a [...]

I am interested in the intersection of Christianity, science, ethics and the environment;  I have found a good niche to undertake this study within both the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Environment. I received my Master of Divinity and Diploma in Ecology from University of St. Michael’s College (here in [...]

Amy Fisher earned her BA (Honours) in Religion and her MA in Religion and Modernity from Queen’s University in Kingston. At the PhD level, she is interested in the anthropology of Christianity and the political economy of religion in order to support ethnographic research among ‘missional’ evangelicals who work in urban homeless shelter.

I am a first year PhD candidate with the tentative intention of pursuing fieldwork amoungst the Coptic Orthodox Christian community in Cairo, Egypt. Specifically i am interested in the Christian Zabbalin community (garbage collectors) who live in Mansheiyet Nasser surrounded by the garbage and recycling that they pick up from Cairo’s busy streets. My research [...]

Maria is in the third year of her PhD at U of T’s Department for the Study of Religion. She is particularly interested in religious conceptions of materiality, contemporary and late antique. Her research explores how word and image, as well as body, are conceived as sacred material in a broad tradition of Greek patristic [...]

Catherine earned her B.Sc. in Classics and Anthropology from the University of Montreal. Her M.Sc., completed in Anthropology at the University of Montreal, focused on women who are possessed by the Great Goddess in India. An incoming doctoral student, Catherine plans to employ an ethnographic approach to study individuals who seek to experience an [...]

Sarah earned her BA in Religion/Philosophy and Sociology from the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2007. In 2008, she earned her MA in Religious Studies from University of Alberta. Also in 2008, she entered the PhD program at the Centre for the Study of Religion. Her research interests include the Synoptic [...]

Jenn is a PhD candidate, working in the area of early Christianity and Roman Religion. Her research interests include house churches, the use of domestic space as sacred or ritual space, Roman domestic cult, and the domestic architecture of the ancient Mediterranean.

Aldea Mulhern is working on a PhD at the Centre, and holds an MA in Religion and Culture (WLU) and a BA in Acting (Honors First-Class, Dalhousie). Her research constellates around food and religion, and includes ritual and performance, bodies and boundaries, feasting, fasting, and sacrifice. She likes to think about method and [...]

I am originally from Tajikistan. I have attended schools and universities in Tajikistan, Russia, England and Canada. I earned my MPhil degree in Classical and Medieval Islamic History from the University of Oxford. My areas of interest include the role of Islam in post-Soviet Central Asia, classical Persian literature, Shi’i (particularly Isma’ili) socio-political history, and [...]

Callie Callon is a fourth year PhD student at the Centre for the Study of Religion.  She received both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the  University of Toronto,  specializing in Christian Origins. Her research interests include Greco-Roman social and cultural history, and how early Christian texts (both canonical and apocryphal) engaged with this.  More [...]

Matthew King is a PhD Candidate in Buddhist Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion. His dissertation focuses on the production and circulation of Buddhist historiography between Tibet and Mongolia in the 19th and early 20th century (prior to the Mongolian revolution in 1921). Specifically, his research currently focuses on the life and [...]

Brigidda received her BA in religion, with a minor in philosophy, in 2009 from U of T, and is currently in the second year of the MA program studying Christian origins. Her major research project focuses on the construction of authority through prophecy in the early Church, examining the Weberian model [...]

Bonnie is a PhD Candidate at U of T’s Centre for the Study of Religion. She received her BA and MA from the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University. Her Master’s thesis was a study on female subjectivity and religion, according to Julia Kristeva. Her current research interests include psychoanalytic interpretations of religion and [...]

Barbara completed her MA in Religion and Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa in 2005. Currently she is researching apologies in Canada, using psychoanalysis to examine both the Canadian government and United Church apologies for residential schools.

I earned my B.A. in Religious Studies and Classics from McGill in 2005. My M.A., also completed at McGill in 2007, outlined a Jungian understanding of Wiccan notions of self-development. My [...]

Bryan received his B.A. in English Language and Literature from U of T in 1969, afterwards pursuing a career in Communications & Marketing. He went back to school in 1991, receiving an MSc. (Geology) in 2001 from U of T. Since then he has been studying Buddhism, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali and Classical Chinese, pursuing his [...]

Sean Hillman will be working on a third degree from U of T with the start of a collaborative PhD in South Asian Religions and Bioethics. He earned a B.A. in East Asian Studies and his Masters research looked at the interaction between voluntary death practices in the Indian religious traditions and secular end-of-life care. [...]

“By day,” Norman Tobias is a tax lawyer, adjunct professor (Faculty of Law, Queen’s University) and author of Taxation of Corporations, Partnerships & Trusts (Carswell), now in its 3rd edition and a text that the Supreme Court of Canada has had occasion to cite. “By night” since 2002, Norman has pursued graduate studies in historical [...]

Erin received her B.A. (Honours) from Queen’s University (Religious Studies) in 2003 and her M.A. from the University of St. Michael’s College (New Testament Studies) in 2007. She is now at the dissertation stage of her doctoral studies, focusing on the role of clothing in the communication of status and gender in the ancient [...]

Alex is a second year PhD student at the CSR working in collaboration with the Centre for Jewish Studies. He completed his MA in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My research will focus on analyzing the development of virtue ethics among the Jews in medieval Spain , North Africa and Provence . [...]

Basit is a second-year MA student, a copy-editor, and a husband. His undergraduate work (University of Alberta) was in critical theory and historical method, and his final project there examined al-Andalus as a locus for late modern political anxieties. His MA project explores Talal Asad’s argument that Benjamin’s approach to allegory can help us address [...]

Adil is a second year MA student at the Centre for the Study of Religion. He has completed an M.Phil in philosophy from the University of London. His interests lie at the intersection of religion and literature with an emphasis on the Qur’an.

Shanifa received her B.A. from the University of Toronto and is currently a second year MA student at the CSR. Her research interests include classical Persian literature, Islamic mysticism, and in particular, Ismaili history and thought. She is also deeply interested in globalization and development. In her spare time, she can be found volunteering at [...]

Rebecca Bartel holds a B.A. from the Canadian Mennonite University (Theology), an M.A. from the Universidad de los Andes (Political Science), in Bogotá, Colombia and a Specialization in Armed Conflict Resolution from the same university. She has lived and worked for the last 8 years in Bogotá and now joins the Department in the PhD [...]

I come from one of the ethnic minorities of Bangladesh known as the Marma. Before I joined the CSR, I studied in Burma and Sri Lanka (PGIPBS, University of Kelaniya) where I was trained in Pali and Theravada Buddhist Studies. I also hold an M.A. in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with Sanskrit Language from Naropa University, Colorado, [...]

I completed a double honours undergraduate degree in History and Political Science at the University of Manitoba. I went on to the University of Victoria to complete a Masters in political science and the interdisciplinary program Cultural Social and Political Thought. During this time, I explored questions of pluralism in contemporary multicultural states, with a [...]

Ryan is a graduate of the University of Oregon (B.S. Religious Studies(Hon.)/Political Science) and Yale Divinity School (MAR Second Temple Judaism).  His research focuses on the formation and development of “apocalyptic historiography” and related conceptions of the time in ancient Judaism.

Omar is a second year MA student with a combined BA in Political Science and Human Rights. His research interests include contemporary Muslim approaches to Islamic Law and religious pluralism and classical  Sufi thought. His current research focuses on the epistemology of the 12th-13th century Sufi mystic Muhyi Din Ibn Arabi and his approach to [...]

Justin is a second-year doctoral student studying North American and Japanese spirituality at CSR as well as at the Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies. His research interests include healing, spirit possession, and “spiritual science.” He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Hamilton College and his M.A. in Religion (Asian) from the University of Hawaii. [...]

Eric completed a BA in Religion and Japanese at the University of Rochester and an MTS in Religion at Harvard Divinity School. He is now in his second year of doctoral study at the University of Toronto. Eric’s research focuses on the Sri Vidya tradition of Sakta worship, with an emphasis on the early 18th [...]

Radka Svacinkova is a visiting PhD student from the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. She focuses on gender aspects in Islam. She is currently working on her PhD thesis, which deals with Islam in contemporary Iran and Turkey. She published several articles and reports for Czech newspapers concerning Islam in the Czech Republic/Europe. She [...]

Tenzan is a second year PhD student studying High Medieval Christianity. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, where he was trained in Early Modern intellectual history and Continental Philosophy.

Ms. Szanto is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Toronto. She graduated Summa cum Laude from Arizona State University in 2002, and received her MA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. Before coming to the [...]

I am a first year PhD student working on a collaborative degree in Religion, Jewish Studies and Diaspora & Transnational Studies. My M.A. work focused on ultra-traditionalist Catholic Holocaust theology after the Second Vatican Council, and I am currently researching ultra-Orthodox Jewish Holocaust theology, collective memory and issues of religious identity among Jewish communities living [...]

Andrew Erlich graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a Double Honours in Religious and Political Studies, and is currently working on his MA in Buddhist Studies at the Centre. His research interests include Tibetan Buddhist ritual and tantric practice. His work includes a collaborative project with fellow MA student Barbara [...]

Jasveen received his BA in Religious Studies and South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto in 2011. He is currently a first year MA student interested in Hinduism and South Asian Religions. His research involves examining the Sanskrit epic, the Râmâyana, through culturally-specific psychoanalytic models.

Nathalie is a second year doctoral student in the CSR working in collaboration with the Centre for Jewish Studies. Her research interests include Hellenistic and Second Temple Judaism, Biblical Wisdom traditions, Water in the Greco-Roman world, and Hellenistic philosophy. She is particularly interested in the changing uses and conceptions of water in the Jewish Diasporic [...]

Amy Marie Fisher is a 2nd year PhD student at the DSR.  She is interested in the creation, maintenance, and use of sacred spaces in antiquity, be they Pagan, Christian, or Jewish in nature.  While she dwells in the physical remains of these sites in the summer, reconstructing them archaeologically, she is also intrigued by [...]

Jason is a fifth year PhD student at the Centre for the Study of Religion and is a Graduate fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute. He works broadly in the areas of continental philosophy and political theory. his current research focuses on the intersection of theology, politics, and historiography in the work of [...]

Area of research: Phenomenology of Religion; Biblical and Midrashic Literature.

Jennifer Bright holds a BA in Religion, Literature and the Arts from the University of British Columbia and a MA in Religion and Modernity from Queen’s University, Canada. Ms. Bright’s primary interests are Tibetan religion, medicine and gender. Currently, Ms. Bright is researching the intersection of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine in the contemporary literature and [...]

Nigel is a  first year PhD student. His reasearch focuses on Kantian Moral Philosophy.

Barbara Hazelton has a BA in Fine Art History and Buddhist Studies. As a graduate student at U of T, her research focuses on Tibetan epic literature and performance. She has lived for many years with Tibetan communities in Asia and Canada and is a practicing artist studying with a Tibetan Thanka painter in Toronto. [...]

Kevin Hodges is studying the cult of Isis (and Graeco-Roman mystery cults in general) and its influence on early Christianity; its linguistic influence, meta-narrative, social expectation, ritual and text until the council of Chalcedon.

Syed Adnan Hussain is currently a PhD candidate in Religious Studies <http://www.religion.utoronto.ca/> at the University of Toronto. Which is to say I received my BA from McGill University <http://www.mcgill.ca/>, a M.T.S from Candler School of Theology <http://www.candler.emory.edu/> and a J.D. from Emory University School of Law <http://www.law.emory.edu/>.  I am currently writing my dissertation on Modern [...]

Elizabeth Klaiber began her post-secondary academic journey in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta, studying early Christianity in general and speaking in tongues in 1 Corinthians in particular. At the Institute of English Studies, University of London, England, she completed a Master’s in the History of the Book focusing on book burning in sixteenth [...]

Gary Mansfield is a part-time graduate student in the collaborative program in the Center for the Study of Religion and the Center for Jewish Studies. His interests are in the area of Jewish Law and Ethics with a focus on Maimonides.

Devanathan did his Masters in Indian Philosophy specializing in Advaita Vedanta at University of Madras, India. He also holds a diplmoa in Manuscriptology. Advaitic-Visnuism, Smarta-ism, Vaisnava Tantra, Pancaratra Agama-s are his bailiwick. Currently, Devanathan is working on the theological-hermeneutics of early medieval Advaitic commentaries upon Vaisnava Upanisad-s.

Elena Young holds a BA in English Literature and Religious Studies, and an MA in Buddhist Studies, both from McGill University. She looks forward to beginning her doctoral studies this year at the Department for the Study of Religion. Elena’s research interests include Tibetan Buddhism and exile identity, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, modernity, and the [...]

Cole Sadler completed his undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2010,  Phi Beta Kappa (ΦΒΚ), and is beginning his MA with the Centre this year. His academic interests include Continental European Philosophy in general, specifically Hermeneutics, Critical Theory, Existential Ethics, also Christian Theology, Rabbinical and Hassidic writings, and [...]

 
Ryan joins the CSR from the University of Alberta where he completed an MA in Christian origins. His doctoral research will focus on ritual and disciplinary practice in early Christianity and religions of the ancient Mediterranean. He is also interested in confession, ancient moral philosophy and ethics, contemporary philosophers and Paul, and method and theory [...]

Ian received his  BA (Honours) from the University of Manitoba in 2009, and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Regina in 2011. His  research centres mainly on Early Christianities, especially the Gospel of Thomas, but also includes Post-Colonialism and Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.

Jairan is a first year PhD candidate at CSR. She completed her MA in cultural studies in EFL University, Hyderabad, India. Her research interests include exploring new possibilities of feminism outside the liberal frame work. She plans to focus on Iran and the conflictual relation between modernism, feminism and, Islam which grew stronger after the [...]

Ashoor is an MA student at DSR. His research interests lie in interdisciplinary study of religion, history, culture, literature, and inter-religious relationship. My focus is on Middle Eastern Christianity (Arabic and Syriac Christianity) during Late Antiquityand Early Medieval Period.

Arun Brahmbhatt holds a BA in Comparative Religion and English from Tufts University, and an MTS in South Asian Religions from Harvard Divinity School. Arun is currently a fourth-year doctoral student in the DSR with a collaboration in South Asian Studies. His research is focused on the intersection of textual practices and the formation of [...]

Yaniv is a first year PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Jewish Studies. He is working primarily on German-Jewish thought and intends to write his dissertation on Leo Baeck. Before coming to Toronto, Yaniv studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the Freie Universität in [...]