Current Graduate Students

Katherine Ling Booska

Katherine is a PhD student in Stanford's History Department, concentrating in modern United States history. She is interested in the development of ideas related to time, modernity, acceleration, regression, traditionalism, and deviancy during the early twentieth century. Currently, she is developing a project about psychoanalysis and the early American conservative movement. Katherine has written on T.S. Eliot's temporal layering, Catholic antiliberalism, evangelical Christian Zionism, and the history of conspiracy theory.

Austin Clements

Austin Clements is a PhD student in the Department of History at Stanford University. His area of focus is the United States in the 20th century, specifically the relationship between religion and politics in the interwar period. His research focuses on the implications of Christian belief systems and their interactions with political ideologies at home and abroad, looking at fascism, antisemitism, communism, and nationalism. Before coming to Stanford he lived in Phoenix, Arizona. He received his BA in History (Honors, summa cum laude) from Arizona State University. He is a recipient of the Silas Palmer Research Fellowship and the ARGC Graduate Fellowship in American Religions.

Ralph H. Craig III

Ralph H. Craig III is a Ph.D. Candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, where his studies included comparative theology and Yoga Studies. His dissertation is a study of medieval representations of Buddhist preachers across South Asian Buddhist literature. Other interests include philosophy, metaphysical religion, religious experience, African American religious history, and religion and popular culture. He is currently writing a religious biography of Tina Turner (under contract).

Daniel N. Gullotta

Daniel N. Gullotta is a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies with a minor in History. His dissertation focuses on the birth of the Jacksonian Democratic coalition and the role religion played in Andrew Jackson's rise to the presidency. Prior to coming to Stanford, he received his MAR from Yale University Divinity School, his MTS from the Australian Catholic University, as well as a B.Th (Hons) from the University of Newcastle, Australia.

Chanhee Heo

Chanhee Heo (she/her) is a PhD candidate in American Religions and a PhD minor in the Department of History. Her research interests include American religions in a global context, racial identity formation, inter-imperial relations in the Pacific, and Asian American history. Her current research focuses on the evolving ideas of race, religion, and nation through transpacific connections between the United States and East Asia from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

jem Jebbia

jem Jebbia is a PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Stanford University. In her studies, jem focuses on race and immigration, interfaith communities, and material religion in California. Her dissertation focuses on community building across religious and racial lines in contemporary California. Other projects include an ethnographic study of the #TacoTrucksatEveryMosque Movement, the religious history of the "Happiest Place on Earth," and a pop-up exhibit called Golden State Sacred, depicting the religious history of California.

Sam McLoughlin 

Sam McLoughlin (she/her) is a PhD student in American Religions at Stanford University. Sam’s research explores American politics and religion in the 20th century with a focus on the influence of Black activists within the American Conservative movement. Previous projects have included the STOP ERA movement and white women spiritualists. She earned her MA in Religion (2023) and a BS in Political Science with a second major in Religion (2021) from Florida State University. 

Johanna Mueller

Johanna I. Mueller is a PhD candidate in American Religions and U.S. History at Stanford University, working on the intersections of religion, race, and national identity in the long nineteenth century. Her current research focuses on the early American foreign missions movement, transnational evangelical connections, and the multifaceted relationship between religion and western imperialism. Among her other interests are African American (religious) history, slavery and abolitionism, Christian fundamentalism, and questions about the separation of church and state in the United States. She is the current co-chair of the Stanford Humanities Center's Blokker Research Workshop on Religion, Politics, and Culture, a forum that seeks to bridge disciplinary boundaries and encourage people from across the university to have important conversations about religion in the past and present. Prior to joining Stanford in 2021, Johanna studied at Heidelberg University (Germany), Yale University’s Divinity School, and Sweet Briar College, VA, and holds a BA in American Studies and an MA in Christianity and Culture. 

Jeffrey Sanchez

Jeffrey Sanchez is a Ph.D. student in the Religious Studies department at Stanford University focusing on American religion. Jeffrey's research explores non-institutional Latinx religious practices in America. In his research, he focuses on these devotions as powerful sources of agency for the Latinx community as well as the policing of these devotions by the state. He earned his Master of Arts (2022) in Religious Studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School along with a graduate certificate in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. He earned his bachelor's in Sociology (2019) with a minor in Religious Studies from Texas State University.

Austin Steelman

Austin Steelman is currently pursuing a PhD in Stanford's Department of History. Prior to coming to Stanford, he earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and worked as a litigator in the field of intellectual property law. His current research focuses on the twentieth-century U.S. religious right and the history of conservative interpretations of the Bible and Constitution.

Valeria Vergani 

Valeria Vergani is a PhD student in American Religions and a PhD minor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research explores the cultural politics of interreligious dialogue in the contemporary US and Canada. She has a particular interest in how issues of secularity,  modernity, religious governance, material culture, and settler colonialism have taken shape within the interfaith movement at the turn of the 21st century. Her research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She received her MA in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto (2021) and a BA in Cultural Anthropology and Religious Studies at Quest University Canada (2016).

Not pictured: Esiteli Hafoka, Nicole Carroll, Sina Salessi