Contours of Catholic Life and Practice Today
Speaker Bios
Rowena Robinson is a professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, where she has focused her research on the sociology of religion and kinship, conversion, and Christianity in India. She is co-editor of Margins of Faith: Dalit and tribal Christianity in India, selected by the editors of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research as among the 15 outstanding books published in 2010 for mission studies. She also co-edited Religious conversion in India: modes, motivations and meanings and Sociology of religion in India. She is author of Tremors of violence: Muslim survivors of ethnic strife in western India, Christians of India and Conversion, continuity and change: lived Christianity in southern Goa. Previously, she has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and the University of Delhi.
Robert Orsi, considered the foremost scholar of American Catholicism, is professor of religion and the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. Previously, he was the Charles Chauncey Stillman Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University. His books, including The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, Thank You, Saint Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, and Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study, have won national awards and have been the focus of multiple symposia. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Foundation. Orsi is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Rev. Thomas G. Casey, S.J. was recently named Dean of the Faculty of Missiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, where he is also professor of missiology and philosophy. His research interests include evangelization and contemporary culture and the philosophy of culture. Previously, he directed the Cardinal Bea Centre for Judaic Studies at the Gregorian and has held teaching positions at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Milltown Institute in Dublin. He is the author of Humble and Awake: Coping with our Comatose Culture, Life and Soul: New Light on a Sublime Mystery, and Music of Pure Love. He co-authored From Fear to Serenity with Anthony De Mello and co-edited Paul's Jewish Matrix, both published in 2011.