Research Assistants

Nami Sophie-Marie Bolat is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Her work explores questions of self, language, and spiritual disillusionment in postmodern thought. She is currently the managing editor of Peripheries, the Center for the Study of...

Michele Cheng is an intermedia artist, multi-instrumentalist, and puppeteer who interweaves music, visual art, and theater to engage with social issues and cultural identities. As an artist-scholar, she creates work that brings greater visibility to...

Katie Clem is an MDiv candidate at Harvard Divinity School devoted to bridging the ineffable power of dance with the rich language of the Christian tradition. Before coming to Harvard Divinity School, she graduated as valedictorian of Saint Mary’s College...

Beverly Cohen is a Master of Theological Studies student at Harvard Divinity School, with an area of focus in Religions of the Americas. She studies Indigenous religious practices in response to colonial powers in the Americas. Beverly is especially...

Alyjan Daya is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Harvard University, specializing in Islamic Studies. He researches the history and development of Ismaili theology and philosophy in the tenth and eleventh...

Giovanni (Gio) DiRusso is a G3 in the Committee on the Study of Religion, specializing in Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. He researches the transmission of ideas in the long late antiquity, with a particular focus on Eastern Christian thought in...

Emma Scharff is a Master of Theological Studies candidate at Harvard Divinity School focusing on religion, literature, and culture. She studies twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry, exploring how experimental poetics reach toward the sacred...

Charles M Zacks is a Master of Theological Studies student at Harvard Divinity School, focusing on religious origins, theories of religion, and Continental Philosophy of Religion. Before starting at HDS, he studied Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at...