Introducing our first cohort of YCFC Partner Scholars: colleagues in scholarship and thought from a variety of institutions and backgrounds, whose exceptional work we want to uplift in collaboration. We look forward to bringing you contributions from each of them in the year ahead.

Tara Isabella Burton

Tara Isabella Burton is the author of the novels Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and Here in Avalon, as well as the nonfiction books Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World and Self-Made: Curating Our Image from Da Vinci to the Kardashians. She is currently working on a history of magic and modernity, to be published in 2027. Tara received her doctorate in theology from Oxford in 2017. She is a Lecturer and Visiting Research Fellow at the Catholic University of America. She blogs about theology, writing, technology, art, language, and enchantment at The Lost Word.

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Daniel Chua

Daniel KL Chua is Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining the University of Hong Kong to head the School of Humanities, he was a Fellow and Director of Studies at St John’s College, Cambridge, and later Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at King’s College London. He is the recipient of the Royal Musical Association’s Dent Medal, an Honorary Fellow of the American Musicological Society, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He served as President of the International Musicological Society from 2017 to 2022.

He has written widely on music, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky, and is particularly known for his work on Beethoven, the history of absolute music, and the intersection of music, philosophy, and theology. His publications include The ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of Beethoven, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning, Beethoven and Freedom, Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music From Earth, Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life, as well as numerous influential essays on music and modernity.

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Keri Day

Keri Day is the Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. In 2023, she became the first African American woman to be promoted to full professor in the 215-year history of the seminary. She earned a B.S. in Political Science and Economics from Tennessee State University, an M.A. in Religion and Ethics from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in Religion from Vanderbilt University.

Her teaching and research interests include womanist and feminist theologies, social critical theory, cultural studies, economics, and Afro-Pentecostalism. She is the author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, the Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America, Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives, Notes of a Native Daughter: Testifying in Theological Education, and Azusa Reimagined: A Radical Vision of Religious and Democratic Belonging. She has been recognized by NBC News as one of six Black women at the center of gravity in theological education in America.

A fourth-generation preacher in the Church of God in Christ, Day serves on the board of the American Academy of Religion, has been a series editor for the Cambridge University Press Religion and Critical Reflection series, and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of World Christianity. She engages public policy leaders and has participated in White House briefings on economic policy, religious freedom, and faith-based initiatives. Her writing has appeared in New York Daily News, The Christian Century, The Feminist Wire, and The Huffington Post.

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Lydia Dugdale

Dr. Lydia Dugdale is the Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. She also serves as Co-Director of Clinical Ethics at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. A practicing internist and hospital ethicist, Dugdale moved to Columbia in 2019 from Yale University, where she previously served as Associate Director of the Program for Biomedical Ethics.

At Columbia, she teaches ethics to medical students and resident physicians and co-teaches the undergraduate course “Living, Dying, and the Meaning of Life.” Her scholarship focuses on aging and end-of-life issues, the virtue of hope, the role of aesthetics in teaching ethics, moral injury, and the doctor-patient relationship. She edited Dying in the Twenty-First Century and is the author of The Lost Art of Dying. Dugdale attended medical school at the University of Chicago, completed residency training at Yale–New Haven Hospital, and holds an MD and a master’s degree in ethics from Yale Divinity School.

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Oliver Dürr

Oliver Dürr studied theology, with a specialization in dogmatics and ecumenical theology, and history at the University of Fribourg. He completed his PhD in theology at Fribourg on the topic Homo Novus: On the Eschatological Transformation of Humanity in the Age of Transhumanism. In parallel, he worked as a research associate at the Center for Faith & Society, where he has served as Director since 2024. He is currently working on his habilitation within the framework of the UFSP Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich.

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Joshua Forstenzer

Joshua Forstenzer is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Engaged Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. An award-winning teacher and researcher, he works primarily on John Dewey, American pragmatism, philosophy of education, democratic education, and related topics. He is the author of Deweyan Experimentalism and the Problem of Method in Political Philosophy and co-editor of The Pedagogy of the Community of Philosophical Enquiry as Citizenship Education.

He has published widely in journals including The Journal of Philosophy of Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Theory and Research in Education, Educational Theory, and The Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society. His research and teaching are driven by the conviction that philosophy can cross disciplinary boundaries and engage meaningfully with public concerns. He has held visiting roles at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tufts University’s Tisch College of Civic Life, and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and has served as Philosopher-in-Residence at the European Parliament and in various European nonprofit organizations.

Janna Gonwa

Janna Gonwa is Assistant Professor of Theology at Gannon University and Director of Gannon’s theology program. She co-chairs the Open and Relational Theologies Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion. She holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in Theology from the University of Chicago, and an M.A. in Philosophy from Tufts University. Gonwa was a doctoral fellow at the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

Her theological work focuses on particularity and personal identity, especially through process-based frameworks such as dynamic systems theory and self-organization theory in reflection on self-formation and spiritual formation. She is a regular contributor to the Open and Relational Theology Conference, the European Conference on Science and Theology, and the Society of Vineyard Scholars. She lives in Erie, Pennsylvania, with her husband, Darius, and their Maine Coon cat, Hallie. She is a bird-watcher, ballroom dancer, and escape-room enthusiast, and remains convinced that one of the best escape rooms in the world is located a mile and a half from Yale Divinity School.

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Angela Williams Gorrell

Angela Williams Gorrell is an author, speaker, and consultant who writes and speaks about the life worth living, joy, meaning, purpose, and the intersection of spiritual and mental health. She is the author of Always On, The Gravity of Joy, and Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR.

She has taught at institutions including Yale University and Baylor University and has provided consulting and thought leadership for organizations such as the U.S. Army and the NBA.

Graham Tomlin

The Rt. Revd. Graham Tomlin is Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness, based at Lambeth Palace in London. He served as Bishop of Kensington in the Church of England from 2015 to 2022. Previously, he was the founding Dean of St Mellitus College, where he now serves as President, and earlier Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught historical theology in the University of Oxford’s theology faculty. He also served as Chaplain of Jesus College, Oxford.

During his episcopacy, Tomlin was closely involved in the church’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, in which 72 people lost their lives. He served as Vice Chair of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Housing, Church, and Community. He is married to Janet, has two children and seven grandchildren, and is the author of numerous books, including Looking through the Cross, The Widening Circle, Luther’s Gospel: Reimagining the World, Why Being Yourself Is a Bad Idea and Other Countercultural Notions, and Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World.