Researcher Reflections

Alfredo García Garza, Harvard PhD 2025 | Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey In an ancient Mesoamerican cleansing cure called limpia , limes are sweeping instruments that remove maladies, and within spiritual healing traditions in the Río Bravo borderlands...

Seth Ligo, Assistant Teaching Professor of Asian Religions, The Pennsylvania State University Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The hills of Southern Appalachia are unrivaled in diversity of salamander species. Mountains become “sky islands” separated by...

Alyson Prude, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Georgia Southern University Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey Delog ( ‘das log ) is a Tibetan word meaning “died and returned.” It refers to people who seem to die but revive several days later to...

William S. Chavez, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Stetson University Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey In 2004, the Vatican requested that all Roman Catholic dioceses appoint and train an exorcist, but as Father Vincent Lampert, former exorcist...

By Avery Morrow, PhD 2026, Brown University Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey Around 1872, Shishino Nakaba, a young samurai and aspiring bureaucrat, encountered loosely organized village societies or confraternities that worshiped Mount Fuji as a god and...

By Chloe Martinez I was a college sophomore in an introductory Hinduism class when I first encountered Mirabai, a sixteenth-century Hindu mystic. Her poems felt alive and immediate to me. I remember staring at the page, wondering, “How am I just now...

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. Francesco Piraino, Tenure-track Research Fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Director of the Center for...

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. I am a painter. The first thing I do in any new studio is to write—in tiny pencil letters, in a corner or by the...

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. Imagine living in a world where you are told that most of what is around you is only an opaque refraction of true...

Edited by Aaron Michael Ullrey The following Research Reflection is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the academic study of religions. In 1891, readers of a small American journal called The Path encountered an article by a Jodhpur pandit titled...