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 by Forum 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 the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining Hong Kong University to head the School of Humanities, he was a Fellow and the 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 2004 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 the President of the International Musicological Society 2017-2022. He has written widely on music, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky, but is particularly known for his work on Beethoven, the history of absolute music, and the intersection between music, philosophy and theology. His publications include The ‘Galitzin’ Quartets of Beethoven (Princeton, 1994), Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge, 1999), Beethoven and Freedom (Oxford, 2017), Alien Listening: Voyager’s Golden Record and Music From Earth (Zone Books, 2021), Music and Joy: Lessons on the Good Life (Yale 2024), ‘Rioting With Stravinsky: A Particular Analysis of the Rite of Spring’ (2007), and ‘Listening to the Self: The Shawshank Redemption and the Technology of Music’ (2011).

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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, NJ.  In 2023, she was the first African American woman to be promoted to full professor in the 215-year history at Princeton Theological Seminary. She earned a B.S. in Political Science and Economics from Tennessee State University, an M.A. in Religion and Ethics from Yale University Divinity School, and her Ph.D. in Religion from Vanderbilt University. Her teaching and research interests are in womanist/feminist theologies, social critical theory, cultural studies, economics, and Afro-Pentecostalism. She has authored four academic books, Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America (2012); Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives (2015); Notes of a Native Daughter: Testifying in Theological Education (2021); and her most recent book, Azusa Reimagined: A Radical Vision of Religious and Democratic Belonging, (2022). She has been recognized by NBC News as one of six black women at the center of gravity in theological education in America. She is a fourth-generation preacher in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC).

Keri also serves as a board member for the American Academy of Religion, and has previously served as a series editor for Cambridge University Press (Religion and Critical Reflection series) and currently is an editorial board member for the Journal of World Christianity. Alongside her scholarship, she also engages public policy leaders. She has participated in White House briefings in Washington D.C. to discuss issues related to economic policy, religious freedom, and faith-based initiatives. She has written for the New York Daily News, The Christian Century, The Feminist Wire, and The Huffington Post.

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Lydia Dugdale

Lydia Dugdale, MD, MAR, is the Dorothy L. and Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Medicine at the 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, Dr 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 she co-teaches the course “Living, Dying, and the Meaning of Life” to undergraduates. Her scholarship focuses on aging and other 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 (MIT Press, 2015) and is author of The Lost Art of Dying (HarperOne, 2020), a popular press book on the preparation for death. Dr Dugdale attended medical school at the University of Chicago, completed residency training at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and holds a MAR in ethics from Yale Divinity School.

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Oliver Dürr

Dr. Oliver Dürr studied Theology (Master of Theology with a specialization in Dogmatics and Ecumenical Theology) and History (Master of Arts in Historical Sciences) at the University of Fribourg (CH). He then pursued a PhD in Theology in 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. Currently, he is working on his habilitation within the framework of the UFSP Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich.

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Joshua Forstenzer

Dr Joshua Forstenzer is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Co-Director of the Centre for Engaged Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. He is an award-winning  teacher and researcher. He works mostly on John Dewey, the tradition of 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 (Routledge 2019) and he is the co-editor of The Pedagogy of the Community of Philosophical Enquiry as Citizenship Education (Routledge 2024). He has published in numerous journals including: TheJournal 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 sense that philosophy, at its best, can operate across disciplinary boundaries and engage meaningfully with public concerns. He has held visiting roles at the Harvard Kennedy School, Tufts' Tisch College of Civic Life, and at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has also served as a Philosopher-in-Residence at the European Parliament and in various European non-profit organisations.

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Janna Gonwa

Dr. Janna Gonwa is an Assistant Professor of Theology at Gannon University and the 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.

Janna was a doctoral fellow at the Center for Faith and Culture during her time at Yale. Her theological work revolves around particularity and personal identity, especially the application of process-based frameworks such as dynamic systems theory and self-organization theory to theological reflection about self-formation and spiritual formation. She is a regular contributor at ORTCON (the Open and Relational Theology Conference), the European Conference on Science and Theology, and the Society of Vineyard Scholars conferences.

When she isn’t contemplating theology or teaching students, Janna spends time in Erie, PA with her husband Darius and their giant Maine Coon cat, Hallie. She is a bird-watcher, a ballroom dancer, and an escape-room enthusiast—and she is firmly convinced that one of the best escape rooms in the world is located in New Haven, a mere mile and a half from Yale Divinity School.

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Angela Williams Gorrell

Rev. Dr. Angela Williams Gorrell is an author, speaker, and consultant. Dr. Gorrell speaks and writes about finding the life worth living, joy, meaning and 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. Angela’s research has been highlighted in media sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Dr. Gorrell has taught at several schools including Yale University and Baylor University. She has provided thought leadership and consulting for numerous organizations including the US Army and the NBA. You can find her at her website www.angelagorrell.com or on instagram @angelagorrell.

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Graham Tomlin

The Rt Revd Dr Graham Tomlin is Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness, based in Lambeth Palace in London. He was Bishop of Kensington in the Church of England between 2015-22. Formerly, he was the founding Dean of St Mellitus College (and remains the President of the College) and before that, Vice Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he taught Historical Theology within the Theology Faculty of Oxford University. He was also Chaplain of Jesus College Oxford. Soon after becoming Bishop of Kensington was very involved in the church’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 in which 72 people lost their lives. He was the 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 many books, including Looking through the Cross (the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book for 2014), The Widening Circle (SPCK 2014), Luther’s Gospel: Reimagining the World (Bloomsbury 2017), Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea and Other Countercultural Notions (SPCK 2020) and most recently, Blaise Pascal: The Man who Made the Modern World (Hodder 2025).