HTI Alumni
Héctor M. Varela Rios
Assistant Professor of Theology, Raquel and Al Martínez-Fonts Endowed Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at Villanova University
Field(s) of Study: Theology and Religion
Dr. Héctor M. Varela Rios (él/he) is Assistant Professor of Theology and Raquel and Alfonso Martínez-Fonts Endowed Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). He also serves as PhD Director for Admissions at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Prof. Varela Rios is proudly HTI ’21 and researches the interaction between Latine theology and material culture. He has published on sancocho and theological anthropology, the word ‘Latine’ as theological micro-intervention, devotional objects and typology of belief, decolonizing Oller’s El Velorio, and a Methodist FBOs and its decolonial social holiness, He also currently has in-press an article on unknowing as a co-salutary intersection between theology and AI tools, and two more under review on role-playing and lived theology and on the people of God as a type of Mary. His first book, called Mariography in the Lived, is currently under review by Fordham University Press. His next research will explore La Virgen del Carmen and her international processional flow. Prof. Varela Rios is proudly Boricua, dreams of his island’s well-being and independence, and loves spending time with his family, including three grandcats and one granddog.