The DSR 50th anniversary panel event at the 2025 AAR conference, “A View from Canada: Toronto and the ‘American’ Academy of Religion,” featured alumni from four different decades: Arun Brahmbhatt (PhD, 2018, now Syracuse University), Judith Ellen Brunton (PhD, 2022, now Rice University), Matthew King (PhD, 2014, now University of California, Riverside), Michele Murray (PhD, 1999, now Bishop's University). The panel was moderated by Amir Hussain (PhD, 2001, now Loyola Marymount University). DSR chair Pamela Klassen remarked that “across all the conversations I had during the conference, it was driven home to me repeatedly that the DSR’s contribution to the wider field of the study of religion has been, and remains, generative and substantial, in the past, the present, and into a cloudy future.”
Judith Ellen Brunton (PhD, 2022), an assistant professor at Rice University, was profiled in Rice News in its article, "‘Religion happens everywhere’: Brunton connects faith, environment, ethics of energy."
Isaiah Ellis, former DSR postdoctoral fellow and now assistant professor of urban religions at Southern Methodist University, is also a research associate for the Center for Religion and Cities (Morgan State University).
Omer Hacker (PhD, 2025) recently took up a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia to pursue his research project “Incorporating the Spirit: Tech Companies Sovereignty and the Inclusion of Religion.”
Alumna Delbar Khakzad (PhD, 2022) has been awarded a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her article, “The Time of Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Iran: Cyclical Time (Dawr), Solar Islam, and the Formation of the Solar-Hijri (Hijri-Shamsi) Calendar,” was published in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Kenneth MacKendrick (PhD, 2004) is Professor and head of the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba. The author of Evil: A Critical Primer (Equinox Press, 2023), he works on the history of the study of religion, critical theory and religion, the study of religion in culture, and religion and the imagination.
Congratulations to former DSR postdoctoral fellow Sophia Omokanye, who has a new position at the Institute for World Church and Mission in Frankfurt, Germany, where she is working on a digital ethnography project on online missionary practices.
PhD alumnus (2006) Henry Shiu’s monograph, The Heart Sūtra: Revisiting Its Texts, History, and Meaning, will be published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press. A launch event will be held in January 2026 at Emmanuel College where Dr. Shiu is the Shi Wu De Professor in Chinese Buddhist Studies.
In Memoriam
Arlene Macdonald (PhD, 2009) passed away on July 23, 2025. Arlene was one of Pamela Klassen’s first PhD students and wrote a brilliant dissertation on religion and organ donation, “Resurrected Bodies: Individual Experiences and Collective Expressions of Organ Transplant in North America.” A compassionate ethnographer and critical theorist, she was also a beautiful writer and a committed teacher.
After many years as a professor at the Institute for the Medical Humanities of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Arlene joined the Honors College of the University of Houston as the Director of the Medicine and Society minor in 2023.
She will be sorely missed by her family, friends, students, and colleagues.
We lost PhD candidate Mirela Stosic to cancer in the fall of 2023, and at that time many DSR friends generously contributed to a fund for planting two trees in her memory.
We are so pleased to announce that the first tree (a serviceberry) was recently planted by the City of Toronto at Crestwood Preparatory College, near Brookbanks Park (where Mirela would often walk with her husband, Kevin). The serviceberry is a native tree with edible berries that birds love – and Mirela was very much an animal-lover.
In the spring of 2026, we plan a walk in the park to remember Mirela – this will likely be in early May. If you would like to be notified of the details when they’re firmed up, please email Fereshteh Hashemi at religion.grad@utoronto.ca.
There are sufficient funds remaining to plant another tree (hopefully closer to the St. George Campus) and we will provide an update on that when we have more information.
