North American Conference April 2024 (update: conference schedule announced)

The Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network is a global community of scholars working at the intersections of theology and ethnography. Together with Emory’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, we will be holding our second annual North American conference in April 2024. This conference will be intimate and dynamic, fostering creative conversations across diverse specialisms and learning at the intersection of qualitative research, theology, and the world church.

A sibling to the annual conference in Durham UK (which can often be difficult for North American scholars to attend due to its location and timing), we keep the community spirit of that meeting alive by prioritizing the work of doctoral students and early career scholars. This will be an excellent place to workshop one’s project as a post graduate student, early career researcher, or pastor/scholar in ministry in conversation with prominent senior scholars including Pete Ward, Durham; Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, Emmanuel College; and Christian Scharen, LSTC and St. Lydia’s.  Expect a collaborative space of generous learning and supportive critique.

Register Now for EENA in April

• External Link for Conference Registration
  • Note: click just one day to register for the entire conference
• External Link for Hotel Reservation
• Keynote Speakers
• Conference Schedule

REGISTRATION COSTS

Given this community’s goal to find ways to support each other across our diverse needs, conference registration costs will be tiered based on need. Please consider which ‘tier’ best reflects your current resources and capacities (i.e., if your earnings are in a lower tier, but your family earnings are much higher or, alternatively, your earnings meet a higher tier but you live in a ridiculously expensive city). We will depend on enough people paying the higher tiers to help those who can’t afford to pay as much, so please consider this when making your choice.

Conference fees cover conference meals including Friday evening dinner, Saturday breakfast and lunch, Sunday breakfast and Saturday lunch (a lunchbox you can take to go), and all coffee breaks. Saturday night dinner will not be covered (providing participants an opportunity to explore Atlanta and its vibrant restaurants).

We encourage all attendees to book at the Emory Conference Hotel. It is walking distance to Candler School of Theology, and the Saturday night music jam and social hour will take place there. Click above to register with our discounted conference rate.

For the conference registration (inclusive of all three days) please select a tier that fits your financial circumstance:

Tier 1: You receive institutional support to cover all or most of your costs (for employed and graduate students) — $180

Tier 2: Your annual earnings are over $75,000 — $150

Tier 3: Your annual earnings are between $40,000-$75,000 — $125

Tier 4: Your annual earnings are below $45,000 — $80

**We don’t want anyone to be excluded from participation because of economic need, so if the $80 remains too high for you, please contact one of the conference organizers to request a bursary. Please only pursue this option if you need it, though, as our funds for this are quite limited.

Lastly – regarding online participation – We charge a small fee for online attendance at the three plenaries and one track of the four presentation sessions ($25).

Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speaker One: Dr. Devaka Premawardhana  (Ph.D. Harvard)  is an ethnographer and religious studies scholar with extensive fieldwork experience in Makhuwa-speaking communities of Mozambique in southeast Africa. His prize-winning book, Faith in Flux: Pentecostalism and Mobility in Rural Mozambique, contests the widely assumed narrative of a worldwide Pentecostal “explosion,” doing so on the grounds that indigenous religions often remain vibrant and influential, even in the lives of converts.

Keynote Speaker Two: Susan Reynolds (Ph.D. Boston College) is a Catholic theologian and ethnographer whose research examines the intersection of ecclesiology and lived Catholicism in contexts of diversity, marginality, and suffering. Her first monograph, People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2023), draws on years of parish-based ethnographic research in Boston to examine the question of community in a racially and culturally diverse church, arguing for the retrieval of solidarity as an ecclesial virtue. Her work has also examined public ritual, urban Catholic practice, parish closures and congregational change, migration, motherhood and pregnancy loss, and the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis.

Jonathan Calvillo’s (Ph.D. University of California, Irvine) work examines how distinct Latinx populations build communities of belonging through faith and creativity, often in the face of systemic exclusion. His current projects focus on how churches shape Latinx civic engagement, how lived religion influences Latinx ethnoracial identities, and how young Latinx creatives have responded to urban inequalities through artistic resistance. Prior to joining the Candler faculty, Calvillo was an assistant professor of sociology of religion at Boston University School of Theology and was also affiliated with Boston University’s department of sociology. The author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, Calvillo published his first monograph, The Saints of Santa Ana: Faith and Ethnicity in a Mexican Majority City (Oxford University Press), in 2020.

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Conference Organizing Group

Rev Dr Christian Scharen, LSTC and St. Lydia’s; Dr Natalie Wigg-Stevenson, Emmanuel College; Dr Easten Law, Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary; Dr Rachelle Green, Fordham University.

Hosts

Emory’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and the Ecclesiology and Ethnography Network