2026–2027 Cohort

M. Cooper Minister, Ph.D.

Professor of Religion | Affiliate Faculty in Gender Studies | Director of Shenandoah Conversations, Shenandoah University

Dr. M. Cooper Minister is Professor of Religion at Shenandoah University, where they teach dialogic courses on theories of religion, sex and gender, medical ethics, and death and dying. With Kevin, they proposed and directed a university-wide program that trained faculty to teach with questions and students to facilitate conversations about difficult topics. They are now working to bring their vision for question-oriented classrooms and campuses to universities around the country and the globe.

Their books include Cultural Approaches to Studying Religion: An Introduction to Theories and Methods (1st and 2nd edition) and The Bloomsbury Reader in Cultural Approaches to the Study of Religion (all co-edited with Sarah Bloesch), Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements, co-edited with Rhiannon Graybill and Beatrice Lawrence, and two monographs: Rape Culture on Campus and Trinitarian Theology and Power Relations: God Embodied.

Their dialogic approach draws on trainings they have done in Reflective Structured Dialogue, Peer-Coaching, Teaching Interfaith Understanding, the Inside-Out Model for Prison Education, numerous workshops at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and their timely encounter with Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed the semester before they taught their first course.

Their current work brings together their expertise in religious and cultural studies and their experience being diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at 33 to develop their unique perspective on what it means to live and die together and the question-oriented process that continues to guide them.

Education

Ph.D., Religious Studies, Certificate in Women’s and Gender Studies, Southern Methodist University

M.T.S., Theology, Boston University

B.A., Theology, Union University

Fields of expertise

Theories of Religion and Culture; Dialogic Pedagogies; Gender and Religion; Disability Studies; Medical Humanities; Medical Ethics

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Kevin Minister, Ph.D.

Professor of Religion | Affiliate Faculty in Environmental Studies | Director of Shenandoah Conversations, Shenandoah University

Dr. Kevin Minister is Professor of Religion and Affiliate Faculty in Environmental Studies at Shenandoah University, where he teaches courses on interreligious studies, dialogue, and environmental studies. Kevin collaboratively developed and still directs Shenandoah Conversations, a university-wide dialogue program that trains faculty and staff to ensure that all undergraduates build the skills to be understood and be understanding in engagements across differences. Kevin’s scholarship explores how communities cultivate sustainable and resilient environments with attention to religious and cultural differences, specifically focusing on pedagogical practices, campus cultures of dialogue and pluralism, and interfaith engagement in community and professional contexts.

The role of Senior Scholar at the JPC builds on Kevin’s national leadership responsibilities in the fields of interreligious studies and dialogue. In 2025, Kevin was elected to the position of Vice President/President-Elect of the Association of Interreligious Interfaith Studies. He also serves on the steering committee for the Interfaith and Interreligious Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Kevin has collaboratively designed and facilitated a national workshop convening on advanced interreligious pedagogy for Interfaith America and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. As an Academic Associate with Essential Partners, Kevin has consulted and provided training for universities across the United States and internationally on how to create campus cultures of dialogue and pluralism as well as for community organizations and businesses cultivating practices to engage across differences.

Kevin’s recent publications include articles on “Dialogue and Equity in the Religious Studies Classroom” (Spotlight on Teaching, July 2022) and “Developing a Decolonial Approach to the Interreligious Studies Classroom” (The Journal of Interreligious Studies, May 2022), as well as chapters on “Interreligious Approaches to Sustainability Without a Future,” (Earthly Things, Fordham University Press, 2023) and “An Ecological Approach to Interreligious Studies” (The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies, Georgetown University Press, 2022). His current scholarly endeavors focus on how we build and measure campus cultures of dialogue and pluralism as well as developing practices that help people ask better questions, cultivate curiosity, and invite shared inquiries.

Education

Ph.D., Religious Studies, Southern Methodist University

M.T.S., Theology, Boston University

B.A., Theology, Union University

Fields of expertise

Interreligious Studies; Dialogue; Pluralism in the Classroom and on Campus; Religion and Ecology

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Samah Choudhury

Assistant Professor, DePaul University

“I am looking forward to joining a group of interdisciplinary scholars committed to public engagement and community building.”

Samah Choudhury is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University where she teaches courses on Islam, race, and gender in the Americas. Samah is at work on her first book, Standup Citizen: American Muslim Humor and the Politics of Secularity, which asks how a sense of humor came to be a prized trait of the modern secular subject and why present-day Muslims are consistently configured as lacking this comportment. Through a study of the American Muslim standup comedians, she contends that Muslim legibility depends on situating Islam within the logics of model secular subjecthood and the register of race. Her work has been supported by the Asian American Religions Research Initiative, the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, the UNC Chapel Hill Asian American Center, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from UNC Chapel Hill, and previously taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, and Ithaca College.

“I am very excited to learn from and with the diverse group of scholars and senior scholars-in-residence; while we have common interests, we each work in very different disciplinary contexts, and I believe this diversity of academic training and professional experience will provide helpful perspective on the work of interreligious studies in multiple contexts and for various publics.”

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Soren Hessler

Assistant Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Administration | Director of the M.A. in Religion and Leadership Program, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Soren M. Hessler is Assistant Professor in the Practice of Leadership and Administration at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He directs Candler’s Master of Arts in Religion and Leadership degree program and co-directs the Atlanta Rabbinic Leadership Lab. His research interests emerge at the intersections of organizational leadership, ecumenical studies, and interreligious studies. Hessler is co-general editor of Methodist Review. He serves as treasurer of the Association for Interreligious/Interfaith Studies and as treasurer of Interreligious Studies Media, the non-profit parent organization of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. He earned his PhD from Boston University and has conducted extensive archival research on the history of the Association of Theological Schools and its antecedent organizations. Prior to joining Emory, he served as Director of Recruitment and Admissions at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Hessler is an ordained elder in full connection in the West Ohio Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.

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Shaunesse’ Jacobs Plaisimond

Assistant Professor, Religion & Health, University of South Florida

“I’m so looking forward to connecting with other people doing interdisciplinary, interreligious research and the enriching conversations that will flow from this community.”

Dr. Shaunesse’ Jacobs Plaisimond is Assistant Professor of Religion and Health at the University of South Florida. She is also affiliate faculty in the department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as the College of Public Health’s Community Health Sciences department. Her research centers ways that personhood can inform healthcare decision-making for black birthing people through an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach. She has held several research fellowships, received numerous grants, and published in several journals. Her first monograph, in progress, assesses the impact on pregnancy care caused by healthcare refusal laws and their implementation in religiously affiliated healthcare organizations.

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Laurel Marshall Potter

Assistant Professor, Theology, University of St. Thomas

“I am looking forward to pruning my thinking in conversation with my cohort partners as I continue to seek a fundamentally comparative mode of doing Christian theology.”

Laurel Marshall Potter, Ph.D., S.T.L., is Assistant Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota/mni sota makoce. Working between systematic and constructive theology, she focuses on the contemporary development of Latin American liberation theologies toward intercultural, interreligious, and decolonial expressions. Dr. Potter's current project looks to the extraordinary liturgical expressions of ecclesial base communities in contemporary El Salvador. Her previous work has appeared in Ecclesiology and Theological Studies, as well as the co-authored book Re-membering the Reign of God: The Decolonial Witness of El Salvador's Church of the Poor (Lexington Books, 2022, with Elizabeth O'Donnell Gandolfo).

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Kate E. Soules

Executive Director, Religion & Education Collaborative

Kate E. Soules, Ph.D. is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Religion & Education Collaborative and a religious literacy scholar, educator, and consultant. Her research focuses on the assessment of religious literacy, curriculum development, teacher learning, and the impacts of religious literacy education. Soules has consulted as a curriculum specialist and program evaluator with organizations including the Centre for Civil Religious Literacy, the International Baccalaureate, the Aspen Institute's Religion and Society Program, and the American Academy of Religion. She is the author of several works on religious literacy and co-edited the volume Religious Literacies in Educational Contexts: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2025). Soules has developed and taught courses about religious literacy and religious liberty for learners from elementary school through adult professional development. She holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development. She is looking forward to learning from the many interdisciplinary perspectives in this cohort and thinking about how her work can be applied across different contexts.

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Jizhang Yi

Director, Institute for Humanistic Buddhist Thought & Practice at Trinity College, University of Toronto

Prof. Jizhang Yi is the Founding Director of the Institute for Humanistic Buddhist Thought & Practice at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in Philosophical Theology from the University of Toronto and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. His research focuses on comparative philosophy and theology, with particular interests in Chinese Chan Buddhism, Humanistic Buddhism, Kierkegaard, and Buddhist–Christian dialogue. Through an existential-hermeneutical approach, his work explores questions of truth, selfhood, and ethical-religious transformation across religious traditions. His forthcoming publications include “Toward an Existential-Hermeneutic Model for Comparative Theology” in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Knowing/Seeing Truth: Conceptual Bridges between Kierkegaard and Chan Buddhism (Springer, 2026). As a member of the 2026–27 cohort of Jay Phillips Center Scholars in Interreligious Studies, he looks forward to advancing new approaches to interreligious understanding and dialogue through his developing existential-hermeneutical framework.

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