2022-2023
HTI/Lilly Dissertation Fellowship

Congratulations to the 2022-2023 HTI/Lily Dissertation Fellowship Recipients!

The HTI/Lilly Dissertation Fellowships are possible thanks to a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.

Patricia Bonilla

Patricia Bonilla

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Patricia Bonilla is the daughter of Mexican migrants. Growing up bilingual and bicultural, she experienced the challenges as well as the creative possibilities of navigating multilingual and multiethnic spaces. Patricia has worked in congregational ministry since 2005 as well as community and youth development, focusing on fostering creative and liberatory educational spaces for Latine youth. She has been a mentor and program coordinator with the Hispanic Youth Leadership Academy since 2008. As an ordained clergy with the United Methodist Church, she has also worked to foster community engagement, leadership, and faith development in faith communities. As a practical theologian, she is acutely aware of the political, epistemological, and cultural implications of education, specifically educating toward liberation and conscientization. Her research interests bring into dialogue and practice critical pedagogies, decolonial theory, and religious education with special attention to engaging with epistemologies of the South and pluriversal ecologies of knowledge. She is interested in the “how to” of educating holistically. As a doctoral student, she researches the practices and theories of faith formation and the generative possibilities of world-building otherwise, particularly from the experiences of minoritized and marginalized racial/ethnic communities.

Raquel C. Feagins

Raquel C. Feagins

Oblate School of Theology

An ordained elder in the Rio Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, Raquel C. Feagins currently serves as Associate Pastor at La Trinidad United Methodist Church, a historic Mexican American congregation in San Antonio, Texas. As a pastor-scholar, Raquel is deeply connected to the spiritual life of her church and community, drawing on those wells of experience for academic reflection. Raquel’s research intersects spirituality, biblical studies, Latina protestant women (pastoras), and feminist/liberatory theologies. 

 

 

Jasmin Figueroa

Jasmin Figueroa

Boston University School of Theology

Jasmin grew up in New York City, where she spent her life being influenced, in one way or another, by the different religious traditions that surrounded her. Through her extended family, she learned about Mennonite, Latina Evangélica, (afro-Caribbean) Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish beliefs and practices. Her own experiences growing up Catholic, attending an Evangélica/Presbyterian church, and later an Evangelical/Pentecostal church, majoring in Jewish Studies in undergrad, and interning as a pastor at a Reformed church and a chaplain at an inpatient psychiatric hospital while attending seminary further shaped her theologies and research interests. Jasmin has a deep appreciation for the roles that practical and pastoral theologies play in shaping communities, and seeks to highlight the ways that all people contribute to (and participate in) theological formation. Her dissertation project seeks to explore the ways that US millennials from minoritized communities embrace culturally competent and affirming theologies and care practices to mitigate the harms of oppressions.

 

Samuel Pagán

Samuel Pagán

Andrews University

Samuel is a Hispanic-American of Puerto Rican ancestry. Though he grew up in the United States, his teenage years were spent in Puerto Rico. After graduating with a BA in Theology from Puerto Rico, he returned to the United States where he then pastored in bilingual and multicultural settings for 20 years. He enjoys researching the 19th and 20th-century American evangelical movement as it relates to modern and post-modern Christianity. He is currently in the writing phase (ABD) of his PhD in Historical Theology and hopes to one day teach the new generation of evangelicals.

Alexandra Rosado-Roman

Alexandra Rosado-Roman

Vanderbilt Divinity School

Alexandra is an Afro-Puerto Rican woman interested in discussing how the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and citizenship have worked to control the bodies of racialized women in Puerto Rico and throughout the Caribbean. The heart of her academic work and her use of decolonial and feminist theories with interreligious engagement, resides in her burning desire to rearticulate ethical and moral socio-religious valuations around racialized women on the island. She received the Patricia Wickham Prize for Feminist/ Womanist Scholarship granted by Drew Theological School, a prize that acknowledges overall excellence and creativity in feminist/womanist work.

Elyssa Salinas-Lazarski

Elyssa Salinas-Lazarski

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Elyssa believes that her theology must touch her body; therefore, her scholarship encompasses her experience as a Mexican-American and as a woman. She is passionate about making the church a safe space for each and everybody because each body is a beloved creation of God, and not a shell of shame. Utilizing her own body as a crux, her research embraces sex and body-positive theology in order to combat a culture of disgrace. Elyssa employs teaching and poetry to connect to her audience at a poetry slam or in a classroom.

Yolanda Michelle Santiago Correa

Yolanda Michelle Santiago Correa

outhern Methodist University

Yolanda was born and raised in Puerto Rico. As the only child of two ordained ministers, at a very early age she understood the importance of who we are and what we believe in as key for the way we operate in this world. It was this reality that pushed her toward higher education to answer questions of identity, theology, race, and culture. Her goal is to engage Afro-Latinidad as a theological location through which we can understand God, our doctrines, and this world. Through her work, she hopes to critique not only the theologies of the dominant culture but also those of her own community while exalting lost voices—the voices of people whose skin is not white and whose theology is deeper and richer than any seminary could ever teach.