Meet Our New Board Members
Outgoing and incoming members of the ISSRNC Board.
We’re happy to welcome aboard our new board members. Keep reading to learn a bit more about each. We’d also like to thank our former board members whose terms ended, which includes Elizabeth Allison, Dan Smyer Yu, Susannah Crockford, Carol Wayne White, Elonda Clay, and Jessica Beaudette. Thanks for all of your hard work on behalf of the ISSRNC.
Elaine Nogueira-Godsey is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Society at Drew University Theological School. She is a Latina ecofeminist scholar whose research contributes to advancing decolonial ecofeminist ethics and perspectives from the Global South. Her work proposes a “decological” approach that integrates decolonial, ecological, and pedagogical analysis to address the modern challenges of Feminism and Religion and Ecology. Her most recent publications are “A Decological Way to Dialogue: Rethinking Ecofeminism and Religion” and “Race, Religion and Environmental Racism in North America.” She is currently working on her book tentatively titled “Roots of Resistance: Ivone Gebara and Latin American Ecofeminism.
Chris Crews is an Assistant Visiting Professor in the International Studies program and Writing Program at Denison University in Ohio. Prior to joining Denison, he taught in the Comparative Religion and Humanities program at CSU, Chico in California, and in the Area and Global Studies Department at GVSU in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His areas of specialization include global social movements, Indigenous rights, environmental justice, religious nationalism, and political extremism. He earned an MA and PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research in New York City, and an MA in Political Science from Ohio University. His recent academic publications include “The Far Right Culture War on ESG” in the journal Religions (2023) and the chapter “Environmental Justice and the Global Rights of Nature Movement” in the Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory (2003).
Sarah Nahar is a PhD candidate in Syracuse, New York (Haudenosaunee Confederacy traditional land) in two programs: Religion at Syracuse University and Environmental Studies at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She focuses on ecological regeneration, community cultivation, and spiritual activism. Her dissertation features the toilet: both the ritual and the receptacle. Previously, Sarah was a 2019 Rotary Peace Fellow and worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the former Executive Director of Community Peacemaker Teams. She graduated summa cum laude from Spelman College, majoring in Comparative Women’s Studies and International Studies, minoring in Spanish and she holds an MDiv from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in her hometown.
Mary Keller is Senior Lecturer, Philosophy and Religious Studies at University of Wyoming. Her work is informed by her family’s role in settler cultures in the context of Alaska and the American West. She studies Indigenous theorizations of the meaning of matter’s energy, especially as that is represented in terms of sacred lands. She continues her interest in theory and method in the study of spirit possession, particularly imagining the Spirit of Climate Change as it impacts landscapes and social ecological systems. She enjoys working in transdisciplinary research teams and scenario planning workshops as people navigate the unsettling landscapes of our time, engaging communities most vulnerable to global warming.
Jeremy Sorgen is Assistant Research Professor at Mills College at Northeastern University. He does community-based research with Tribal and local governments on natural and cultural resource management. His current funded projects include a study of cannabis impacts to Tribal cultural resources in California, Tribal consultation under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and the protection of Pomo sacred sites and cultural heritage in and around Clear Lake. He is guest editing a special issue on “engaged scholarship” that will appear this year in The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. He is also working on a book project, Research in Relationship, on the ethics and pragmatics of knowledge co-production in environmental studies.
Victoria Machado is a visiting assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Rollins College where she teaches Nature Spirituality and Environmental Crisis in its Cultural Context. She holds a PhD in religious studies with a dual specialization in Religion in the Americas and Religion & Nature from the University of Florida. Drawing from her connections as a former environmental organizer, Victoria’s research focuses on the environmental humanities and the spiritual dimensions of Florida’s environmentalists, especially surrounding the subject of water. Apart from the classroom, Victoria is part of the Florida Humanities Speakers Bureau and gives talks on Florida’s Sacred Waters.
