Abigail Carl-Klassen

Originally from Seminole, Texas, Abigail Carl-Klassen is an educator, writer, and translator living on the U.S.-Mexico border. She is the author of two chapbooks, Ain’t Country Like You (Digging Press, 2020) and Shelter Management (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), the Director of the Rebels, Exiles, and Bridge Builders: Cross-cultural Encounters in the Campos Menonitas of Chihuahua Oral History Project, and the creator of the Darp Stories YouTube Channel. Her poetry, essays, and scholarly work have been published in English and Spanish and have appeared in The Journal of Mennonite Studies, Preservings, Mennonite Quarterly Review, Sororidad intercultural, ZYZZYVA, Guernica, Poets Reading the News, and Huizache, among others.

Anna Flack

Anna Flack is a cultural anthropologist and works at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. She holds an M.A. in East-West-Studies and defended her Ph.D. thesis on contemporary everyday food practices of Russian Germans in Western Siberia at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Her current work focuses on different Russian Germans living in the Bolivian countryside. Anna’s research interests include migrants, remigrants, stayees, food and other everyday practices, oral history, and belongings.

Ben Goossen

Ben Goossen is a historian of modern nationalism and the global environment at Harvard University. He is currently writing a book about the 1957-1958 International Geophysical Year. His first book, Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, appeared in 2017 with Princeton University Press. Goossen has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the European University Institute. He writes widely on Anabaptist faith, life, and history.

Katherine Hill

Katherine Hill is a historian of early modern cultural and religious history in global contexts. Currently she is employed as a Lecturer in Early Modern History at Birkbeck University, London. She started at Birkbeck in 2017, after a position as Lecturer in Early Modern history at UEA. Prior to this she held a British Academy Post-Doctoral fellowship at Oxford where she also completed her DPhil and Masters, supervised by Professor Lyndal Roper.

Simone Horst

Simone Horst is special collections librarian at Eastern Mennonite University. She grew up in Elkhart, IN and came to EMU as an undergraduate. She earned a B.A. in History and Social Sciences from EMU in 2012 then went on to earn her MLIS from the University of South Carolina in 2014. Her interest in EMU’s special collections began during her freshman year of college when she applied for a job as a work-study student in the EMU Archives. She worked as a student in both the EMU Archives and in Menno Simons Historical Library for six years prior to beginning her current role in July of 2014. Horst lives in Park View with her husband, Michael, and they attend Community Mennonite Church of Harrisonburg.

Patricia Islas

Dr. Patricia Islas is a research professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua,  México, and participates in research at the highest level in Mexico as a member of the National System of Researchers. She earned a doctorate in education from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua and is the author of two books: Mennonites of Northeastern Chihuahua: History, Education and Health and The Mennonite Colony in Chihuahua: Case Studies for Social Well-Being. She co-authored three books, Debate for History volumes II and IV and Mennonite Women: Views and Expressions. She also published the Outstanding Mennonite Men and Women: Inspirational Paths magazine and book chapters in the University of Guadalajara’s, Digital Openness: Appropriation and the Use of Digital Technology within Minority Ethnic Groups in Mexico.

Maxwell Kennel

Maxwell Kennel completed his PHD in Spring 2021 in McMaster University’s Department of Religious Studies where he has also taught courses on religion and violence and approaches to the study of religion. His dissertation Ontologies of Violence uses violence as a diagnostic concept to analyze Jacques Derrida’s “Violence and Metaphysics,” Mennonite pacifist epistemologies, and Grace M. Jantzen’s trilogy Death and the Displacement of Beauty. In fall 2021 Palgrave Macmillan will publish his book Postsecular History: Political Theology and the Politics of Time, and he will begin work as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He has published articles on time and history in Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses, Political Theology, rhizomes, and Telos, and articles on Mennonite topics in Literature & Theology, the Mennonite Quarterly Review, the Journal of Mennonite Studies, and Hamilton Arts & Letters. In 2017 he edited Mennonite historian Robert Friedmann’s manuscript Design for Living: Regard, Concern, Service, and Love (Wipf & Stock), and in 2021 he served as a guest editor for a special issue of Political Theology showcasing interdisciplinary expressions of Mennonite Political Theology.

Alec Loganbill

Mark L. Louden

Mark L. Louden is the Alfred L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he also directs the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies and is an affiliate faculty member in the Religious Studies Program, the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, and the Department of Linguistics. He received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. in Germanic linguistics at Cornell University. A fluent speaker of Pennsylvania Dutch, most of his published research and public outreach center on the language and its speakers, past and present. His book, Pennsylvania Dutch: The Story of an American Language, appeared in 2016 in the Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies series published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Aside from his teaching and research, he serves as an interpreter and cultural mediator for Amish and Old Order Mennonite groups in the legal and health care systems. Married with one daughter, he is a member of Milwaukee Mennonite Church.

Jessica C. Lowe

Jessica C. Lowe is a PhD Candidate in early modern European history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is interested in the everyday experience of reform and Reformation, especially as it relates to movement. Her current work focuses on Anabaptist itinerancy in the northwest Holy Roman Empire, and examines how economic instruments, such as dispossession and Schutzgeld, were used to negotiate tenuous socio-religious settlements. Her dissertation research has been funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Devin Manzullo-Thomas

Devin Manzullo-Thomas is director of the Sider Institute for Anabaptist, Pietist and Wesleyan Studies at Messiah College, and a PhD student in American history at Temple University. His research falls into two categories. As a denominational historian of the Brethren in Christ Church, he applies his training in cultural and religious history to understand how this small religious community has changed over time. As a public historian of American religion, he studies the ways in which religious communities construct, commemorate, and contest the past in public through historical societies, heritage sites, museums, monuments, archives, and other institutions of public memory. His articles and reviews have appeared in Brethren in Christ History and Life, Mennonite Quarterly Review, The Conrad Grebel Review, Church History, and other publications. He, his wife Katie, and their son Lucas attend the Grantham Brethren in Christ Church.

Ted Maust

Ted Maust is currently pursuing an M.A. in Public History at Temple University. He graduated from Goshen College (Ind.) with majors in History and English, writing his thesis on John F. Funk and the ‘Herald of Truth’. Ted’s academic interests include oral history, Anabaptist/Mennonite history, East African studies, cultural criticism, and thinking about ways for cultural institutions to share stories outside their walls and their “lifeblood” constituencies.

Lucille Marr

Lucille Marr is Adjunct Professor teaching Canadian Church History and Women in the Christian Tradition in McGill University’s School of Religious Studies. She is a member of their Centre for Research on Religion. She also serves as Chaplain and Academic Dean at The Presbyterian College, Montreal, which is affiliated with the McGill School of Religious Studies. A Mennonite pastor, she has also served on the executive of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada and the Canadian Society of Church History. Formerly, she was Associate Professor at Augustana University College, Alberta. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Waterloo. She is the author of “‘I guess I won’t be able to write everything I see . . .’: Alice Snyder’s Letters Home, 1948-1950 (Waterloo, ON: Pandora Press, 2009) and Transforming Power of a Century: The evolution of Mennonite Central Committee in Ontario (Waterloo, ON: Pandora Press, 2003). She co-edited Still Voices, Still Heard (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2015).

Christina Entz Moss

Christina Moss earned her PhD in history from the University of Waterloo on 2019. Her dissertation, entitled “‘Your Sons and Daughters Shall Prophesy:’ Visions, Apocalypticism, and Gender in Strasbourg, 1522-1539,” examines the lives and work of Lienhard and Ursula Jost, Anabaptist prophets and associates of Melchior Hoffman. She teaches courses online for Conrad Grebel University College and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she attends Portland Mennonite Church.

David Y. Neufeld

David Y. Neufeld is a historian of religion, culture, and daily life in the early modern world, with a particular focus on the history of German-speaking lands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his current book project, Neufeld explores how the maintenance of alternative cultures by religious minorities shaped their ability to coexist with members of the majority, using later Swiss Anabaptists as a case study. He also explores how archival practices have shaped historiographical characterizations of early modern Anabaptist separateness. Neufeld earned his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2018. He has held grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Society for Reformation Research, and the Leibniz Institute for European History (IEG). Neufeld is the author of Common Witness: A Story of Ministry Partnership between French and North American Mennonites, 1953-2003, published with the Institute of Mennonite Studies and Éditions de La Talwogne in 2016. He attends Shalom Mennonite Fellowship in Tucson.

Joel Horst Nofziger

Joel Horst Nofziger is an independent scholar based in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. A native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, his research interest lies in understanding how Mennonites in the United States have constructed and perpetuated their identity through the stories they tell themselves. He has a BA in History and Peacebuilding & Development from Eastern Mennonite University. He and his wife attend Pilgrims Mennonite Church in Akron, Pennsylvania, and Keystone Friends Monthly Meeting (Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative).

Melody Pannell

Melody Pannell has served in the field of social work, higher education and ministry for over 25 years. Currently, she is serving as Assistant Professor of Social Work in the Department of Applied Social Sciences and Chairperson for the Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Eastern Mennonite University. In her commitment as a community organizer, social justice advocate and church leader, Melody has recently been appointed as the Chairperson for the Religious Affairs Committee serving the local NAACP Branch. Melody was born and raised in Harlem, New York City at Seventh Avenue Mennonite Church (now Infinity Mennonite), where her calling, passion and dedication for community outreach developed. As a response to the social disparities affecting adolescent girls in her community, she founded The Seventh Avenue Mennonite Church Girls Group in 1990, which has now evolved into the women’s empowerment ministry of Destiny’s Daughters; a Therapeutic Spiritual Mentoring Program dedicated to the personal transformation, holistic development and self -empowerment of young women and girls. It is her vision to address historical harms, dignity violations and structured discriminations that affect the positive development and holistic well-being of adolescent girls. Her current academic scholarship interest, classroom teachings and hands-on work include trauma informed care, post-traumatic slave syndrome, critical race theory, crisis intervention, practical theology, womanist theology, spiritual formation, restorative justice, diversity and inclusion, social justice advocacy, intersectionality and social work core values, ethics and  competencies. It is her life mission to embody practical theology through the values and ethics of social work and encourage those that she serves to engage in a transformative journey of “emancipatory hope in action.”

Nina Schroeder

Nina Schroeder is a post-doctoral researcher with the Doopsgezind Seminarium at the Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), where she is conducting research on Dutch Mennonite life and artistic engagement in the early modern period. In her doctoral research with the art history department at Queen’s University, she investigated the representations of early Anabaptism in Dutch visual culture of the seventeenth century. Her research interests include Dutch Golden Age painting, early modern print history, and Mennonite social networks within the Dutch art marketplace. Nina is a member of River East Church in Winnipeg, and a regular attendee at Amsterdam’s Mennonite church, the Singelkerk.

Tobin Miller Shearer

Tobin Miller Shearer is an associate professor of history at the University of Montana where he also directs the African-American Studies Program. He is, with Regina Shands Stoltzfus, the co-founder of the Damascus Road Anti-Racism Process. His most recent book Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America was published by Cornell University Press in the spring of 2017.

Janis Thiessen

Janis Thiessen is Professor of History and Associate Director of the Oral History Centre at the University of Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian, food, and business history. Her research interests include the twentieth century history of labour, business, and religion, as well as food history and oral history. She has written four books:Manufacturing Mennonites: Work and Religion in Twentieth-Century Manitoba (University of Toronto Press, 2013), Not Talking Union: An Oral History of North American Mennonites and Labour (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), Snacks: A Canadian Food History (University of Manitoba Press, 2017), and Necessary Idealism (Canadian Mennonite University Press, in press).

Rebecca Janzen

Rebecca Janzen is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. She is a scholar of gender, disability and religious studies in Mexican literature and culture whose research focuses on excluded populations in Mexico. Her first book, The National Body in Mexican Literature: Collective Challenges to Biopolitical Control (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2015), explored images of disability and illness in 20th century texts. Her second book, Liminal Sovereignty: Mennonites and Mormons in Mexican Culture (SUNY, 2018), focuses on religious minorities. This was funded by the Plett Foundation, the Kreider Fellowship at Elizabethtown College and the C Henry Smith Peace Trust. Her current work examines the intersection of legal and literary discourse as it pertains to minority communities in Mexico and was supported by a short-term fellowship at the Newberry library in Chicago.

Regina Wenger

Regina Wenger is a PhD student at Baylor University where she is training as a historian of
religion and education. Her research focuses on contemporary evangelicals’ interactions with public education, particularly released time education programs. She also has an interest in twentieth century Mennonite female preachers, having written and presented on the life and ministry of Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus. Before doctoral work, Regina studied at Duke Divinity School and pastored a Mennonite church in northwest Ohio. She lives in Waco, Texas and is a member at Dayspring Baptist Church.