2024-2025
HTI/Lilly Dissertation Fellowship

The grandson of agricultural workers and day laborers, Danny Ballon-Garst was born and raised in San Diego, California, along the San Ysidro/Tijuana border, where his dad pastored an Apostolic church. As a scholar, Ballon-Garst is interested in studying the relationship between religion and social change, and he pursues his research questions primarily through a historical lens. In his doctoral studies, Ballon-Garst will conduct a historical study of black and brown queer Pentecostals and Evangelicals in the United States in the twentieth century, drawing connections from these historical movements and actors to current queer religious movements, including queer transnational religious movements in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Ballon-Garst practiced law at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and at a corporate law firm in Los Angeles.

Guilherme Brasil de Souza was born in Brazil and at an early age, moved to the United States, and later returned to the state of Bahia in Brazil to attend middle school and high school. After that, Brasil de Souza returned to the United States to pursue undergraduate and graduate studies. Brasil de Souza is passionate about learning about different cultures and is interested in the intersections of religion, politics, and human rights. He loves to learn different languages and engage in interfaith dialogues with anyone that has questions about his Seventh-day Adventist beliefs.

Jon-Paul Lapeña is a first-generation college student born to farm workers. He was raised Pentecostal in the desert of the Coachella Valley, California. Lapeña studies the New Testament and early Christianity, broadly on the topic of healing and health practices in the ancient Mediterranean. He is specifically interested in testing whether modern categories of addiction provide useful frameworks for critically engaging ancient medical, philosophical, and religious discourses around substance abuse. The dissertation aims to seek evidence of addiction patterns in antiquity, elucidate the rhetorics critiquing drunkenness, and challenge long-dominant historical interpretations that perpetuate stigma and discrimination against people with addictive behaviors.

Joshua Mendez is the son of Puerto Rican and Chilean parents. His dissertation explores the role of providential thought in the processes of racial formation and the emergence of capitalism during the colonial encounter(s) of the long 16th Century. Mendez’s research interests include the relationship between religion and political economy, Latin American cultural studies, and philosophy and radical politics.

Daniel Montañez was born in Visalia, California to a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father. After learning the significance of his own migration story as a second-generation Latino, he became interested in discovering God’s heart for migrants. This influenced his research interests, which include theology, ethics, philosophy, migration, Pentecostalism, and Latine studies. Montañez’s research focuses on constructing a Christian social ethic of migration that can positively and proactively respond to the migration crisis in our modern world. Montañez hopes to serve at the intersection of academia, the church, and the public square to begin to transform the narrative of migration within US society.

Geoffrey Nelson-Blake is a Mexican-American California native whose academic interests were formed and transformed by his time as a practitioner, both as a Seventh-day Adventist pastor and a faith-based community organizer. His interests include missiology, public theology, and decolonial theory. Drawing from research interviews, his dissertation investigates how future-oriented, eschatologically driven mission is a primary source of motivation for many participants of faith-based community organizing. Nelson-Blake aspires to teach full-time, having recently taught a course designed as a dialogue between mission studies and decolonial studies. His publishing experience includes a chapter for a book and an essay for The Washington Post.