Leadership

Sara is an assistant professor of religious studies at Fairfield University. Her scholarship examines possibilities for just relationships in contexts marked by asymmetries of power and privilege. Sara’s research on this topic has spanned progressive American Christian Holy Land tourism and, more recently, gentrifying post-industrial U.S. urban communities. Sara received her PhD from Emory University in 2021, her MA in Religion from Yale Divinity School in 2013, and her Master of Social Work from the University of Georgia in 2008. Prior to entering academia, she worked for several domestic nonprofits and international NGOs in social work, nonprofit management, and human rights.

Kristyn Sessions is a Catherine of Siena Fellow in the Ethics Program at Villanova University.  She earned her Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University in the area of ethics and society. Her research focuses on the intersection of religion, political activity, and social justice in the United States.

Prior to entering academia, Kristyn partnered with a rural women’s development organization as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, West Africa and served local churches in Anchorage, Alaska as a community organizer, working with congregation members to address quality of life issues in their neighborhoods.

Luke is currently the Associate Dean of the Stevenson School for Ministry in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania and an Episcopal Priest serving a parish in Pittsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. from Princeton Seminary in Theology and Ethics and wrote his dissertation on liturgy and moral formation in Anglican theologian Richard Hooker. He is also interested in disability ethics and accounts of religious language. As a member of the FPE board, Luke looks forward to creating spaces to share and comment on each other’s work and to help foster connections between the academic and ecclesial aspects of the FPE’s work.

Carl recently completed his PhD in ethics at the University of Notre Dame. His dissertation is an interdisciplinary appraisal of normative approaches to land use, focusing in particular on environmental ethics, systems theory, and sustainable agriculture. Carl’s research interests attempt to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical approaches to ethics and primarily engage religion and science, political theory, public policy, and environmental ethics. He is also involved in envisioning, developing, and launching a new peace and sustainable development centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. He has been a member of FPE since 2019 and served as fundraising liaison for FPE’s conference that same year. He would like to create the space for FPE to imagine new, sustainable forms of ethics scholarship and education while supporting fruitful exchanges between diverse methodological perspectives.  He is currently a public policy advisor on climate change for a food security organization in Canada.