WASHINGTON (September 5, 2024) — Today, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, announced the selection of 15 interdisciplinary scholars as PRRI Public Fellows, the organization’s seventh cohort of fellows and the fourth cohort under its Religion and Renewing Democracy Initiative. Selected via a nationwide open call for mid-career scholars, the diverse cohort will work alongside PRRI researchers and staff to generate impactful commentary and analysis at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics.

“As our country’s racial and religious demographics continue to evolve, PRRI is proud to support emerging public scholars who contextualize current events through a variety of lenses,” said Melissa Deckman, Ph.D., chief executive officer of PRRI. “This year’s cohort of PRRI Public Fellows will continue conducting innovative research and advancing important conversations in our multi-racial, multi-faith, and pluralistic democracy.”

Through the Religion and Renewing Democracy Initiative, the Public Fellows program encourages collaboration and professional growth. Through the Initiative, the Public Fellows are organized into five groups, based on their work in PRRI’s major research areas: religious, racial, and ethnic pluralism; racial justice and white supremacy; immigration and migration studies; LGBTQ rights; and — new this year — reproductive health and rights. All Public Fellows will also benefit from PRRI’s ongoing public opinion research and media contacts.

The PRRI Public Fellows program is made possible through generous grants from the Mellon Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. The 2024-2025 cohort is comprised of scholars from both quantitative and qualitative fields, including history, sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology, literature and religious studies.

PRRI welcomes 2024-2025 Public Fellows: Dr. Lloyd Barba, Dr. Youssef Chouhoud, Dr. Risa Cromer, Dr. Dara Delgado, Dr. Chana Etengoff, Dr. Michael R. Fisher Jr., Dr. Seth Gaiters, Dr. Sergio González, Dr. Anita Huízar-Hernández, Dr. Ansley Quiros, Dr. Michal Raucher, Dr. Landon Schnabel, Dr. Allyson Shortle, Dr. Anne Whitesell, and Dr. Joanna Wuest.

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About PRRI

PRRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting independent research at the intersection of religion, culture, and politics.

2024-2025 PRRI Public Fellows

Reproductive Health and Rights

Risa Cromer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University

Risa Cromer (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University where she teaches on gender studies, health politics, and science and technology studies. Cromer is a feminist cultural anthropologist specializing in the intersections of reproductive politics, religion, and race/racism in the United States. Her research has been supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Institute for Citizens & Scholars, Luce Foundation, American Association of Religion, and American Association of University Women. She is the author of Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics (NYU Press 2023), which provides a timely look at the contemporary stakes of post-Roe America by examining the strategic inroads made by the U.S. Christian Right in the realm of assisted reproduction over the past quarter century. She co-leads the Reproductive Righteousness Project and is working on her next book about post-Roe reproduction in red states. Cromer’s work has been featured in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals and popular outlets, including Medical Anthropology and Rewire News.

Michal Raucher, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University

Michal Raucher (she/her) is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, where she teaches courses on religion and reproduction, women and gender in contemporary religion, and Israel/Palestine. Her research focuses on women in contemporary Judaism, reproductive ethics, and religious authority. Raucher is the author of Conceiving Agency: Reproductive Authority among Haredi Women (Indiana University Press, 2020), an ethnography of Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish women’s reproductive ethics. She is writing her second book, The New Rabbis, an ethnography of women rabbis in American Orthodoxy. Dr. Raucher is a principal investigator on two studies exploring the intersection of religious identity and abortion. She has interviewed over 100 Jews who have had abortions in America since 1973. Dr. Raucher earned her Ph.D. in religious studies from Northwestern University. She also has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University.

Anne Whitesell, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Political Science at Miami University

Anne M. Whitesell is an Assistant Professor in Political Science and Associate Director of the Menard Family Center for Democracy at Miami University. Her book, Living off the Government? Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare (NYU Press, 2024) examines how stereotypes of welfare recipients are used by interest groups to create state welfare policy. Whitesell’s research has been published in Political Research Quarterly, Party Politics, Politics & Gender, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and Policy Studies Journal. She received her Ph.D. in political science and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from Pennsylvania State University in 2017.

Immigration and Migration Studies

Lloyd Barba, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Religion and Latinx/Latin American Studies at Amherst College

Lloyd D. Barba is an Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He is the author of the award-winning book Sowing the Sacred: Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California (Oxford University Press, 2022), editor of Latin American and US Latino Religions in North America: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2024), and co-editor of Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender, and Culture (Penn State Press, 2023). His current public scholarship on the Sanctuary Movement includes “Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State,” a podcast, co-written and co-hosted with PRRI fellow Sergio González (coming Fall 2024 with Axis Mundi Media). Barba’s current writing on the Sanctuary Movement include A Refuge of Resistance: A History of the US Sanctuary Movement (under contract with Oxford University Press) and a volume edited with Sergio González, Sacred Refuge: New Histories of the Sanctuary Movement (under contract with NYU Press). His work has been published in media outlets including The Conversation US, The Washington Post, and Religion and Politics.

Sergio M. González, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University

Sergio M. González is Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University and a historian of twentieth-century U.S. migration, labor, and religion. His scholarship focuses on the development of Latino communities and social movements in the U.S. Midwest. He is the author of Mexicans in Wisconsin (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017) and Strangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin (University of Illinois Press, 2024), and the co-editor of Faith and Power: Latino Religious Politics Since 1945 (NYU Press, 2022) with Felipe Hinojosa and Maggie Elmore. González is a co-founder and former organizer for the Dane Sanctuary Coalition and is currently completing a podcast and co-edited volume on the movement with Lloyd Barba entitled Sacred Refuge: New Histories of the U.S. Sanctuary Movement (under contract with NYU Press). González contributes to multiple public humanities initiatives, including serving as co-host for the PBS Wisconsin series The Look Back and as a public historian for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Anita Huízar-Hernández, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University

Anita Huízar-Hernández (she/her/ella) is Associate Director of the Hispanic Research Center and Associate Professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the historical roots of Latino religious, political, and cultural expression. She is currently working on her second book, From Cristero to Chicano: Mexican Catholic Nationalism and the Making of Latino Identity, which traces the transnational impact of the Cristero War (1926-1928) — an armed conflict between a group of conservative Catholic revolutionaries and the Mexican government on U.S. Latino identity. Huízar-Hernández’s essays have appeared in a wide variety of journals and edited volumes, and she is the author of Forging Arizona: A History of the Peralta Land Grant and Racial Identity in the West (University of Chicago Press, 2019). She is also part of the project team for multiple digital humanities projects, all of which focus on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In 2023, she received the Arizona Humanities Public Scholar award.

Racial Justice and White Supremacy

Michael R. Fisher Jr., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University

Dr. Michael R. Fisher Jr. (he/him) is Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar, Michael R. Fisher Jr.’s areas of specialization include race, policy, and socio-economic inequality and Black religion and cultural studies. He is a former Pardee RAND Faculty Leader Fellow in Policy Analysis and former Public Voices Fellow with the Op-Ed Project. Before his career as an educator, he was a public policy advocate on Capitol Hill where his policy portfolio included federal social welfare programs addressing poverty. He later transitioned to local politics and policy when he became the inaugural Director of Advocacy at a nonprofit organization with a mission to end chronic homelessness in the nation’s capital.

Allyson Shortle, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma

Dr. Allyson Shortle (she/her) is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, where she studies group identity in the context of American political behavior. She is also a faculty member in Latinx Studies and Women and Gender Studies, runs OU’s Community Engagement + Experiments Laboratory (CEEL), and serves as the principal investigator of Oklahoma City’s Community Poll. She is the co-author, along with Eric L. McDaniel and Irfan Nooruddin, of The Everyday Crusade: Christian Nationalism in American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Ansley Quiros, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History at University of North Alabama

Dr. Ansley Quiros is an Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department of History at the University of North Alabama, where she studies race and religion in American life. She is the author of God With Us: Lived Theology and the Freedom Struggle in Americus, Georgia, 1942-1976 (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) and is currently working on a biography, Committed: The Lives, Work and Love of Charles and Shirley Sherrod. Along with Dr. Brian Dempsey, she co-directs the Civil Rights in the Shoals Project, funded by a National Park Services grant.

Religious, Racial, and Ethnic Pluralism 

Youssef Chouhoud, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University

Youssef Chouhoud (he/him) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University, where he is affiliated with the Reiff Center for Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. His research in the United States and the Middle East models support for core democratic norms, with a focus on political tolerance and hate speech. Chouhoud also has an extensive record of public scholarship on Arab and Muslim American public opinion. In 2025, his co-authored book, On the Significance of Religion for Climate Change, will be published by Routledge.

Dara Coleby Delgado, Ph.D.
Bishop James Mills Thoburn Chair of Religious Studies and Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies at Allegheny College

Dara Coleby Delgado (she/her) is the Bishop James Mills Thoburn Chair of Religious Studies, an Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, and an affiliate faculty in Black Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Allegheny College. She received her Ph.D. in theology from the University of Dayton. Coleby Delgado’s research interests include race, gender, public policy, and popular culture in American religious life. Her research has been funded by the AAUW Dissertation Fellowship, and she has written about American religion broadly and Pentecostals/Pentecostalism narrowly in scholarly journals, edited volumes, and popular news outlets. Coleby Delgado is continuing her work on Bishop Ida Bell Robinson, founder of the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, in a forthcoming book with Penn State University Press. The text uses a social-historical frame that employs various theories around race, gender, and class to critically examine Bishop Robinson’s life and work around gender justice.

Seth Gaiters, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at North Carolina State University

Seth Emmanuel Gaiters (he/him) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at North Carolina State University. He is a scholar of African American religious studies, with particular interest in the exploration of religion and race through Black progressive social movements and cultures in America. His interdisciplinary research and teaching trajectory engages the intersection of African American religious thought, political theology, race, African American literature, and critical theory. He is currently completing his book manuscript, tentatively titled, #BlackLivesMatter and Religion in the Street: A Revival of the Sacred in the Public Sphere. In this project, he brings his interests to a study of #BlackLivesMatter (BLM) as a way of broadening normative notions of (Black) religiosity and elucidating the synchronicity of spirituality and social justice in Black political organizing. His scholarly work has been supported by fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Louisville Institute, Forum for Theological Exploration, and Social Science Research Council, to name a few.

LGBTQ Rights

Chana Etengoff, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University

Chana Etengoff (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University, where she teaches graduate courses in diversity, social justice, and intersectional psychology. She is also integrating these theories into foundational courses, such as general psychology, developmental psychology, and research methods. Her mixed-methods research focuses on intersectional identity development, particularly LGBTQ+ and religious identities. Etengoff’s first edited book, The LGBTQ+ Muslim Experience (Routledge, 2023), presents a compilation of quantitative and qualitative research exploring LGBTQ+ Muslims’ diverse experiences across the globe. Etengoff’s extensive mixed-methods research with LGBTQ+ individuals from religious backgrounds provided the foundation for her recent collaborative development of the Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration measure (SMRII, 2024), which can be used in clinical settings to help assess the interplay between religious and sexual identities. Her work was honored by Eastern Michigan University’s Equality Knowledge Project Award, and has appeared in high impact academic journals, as well as in her Psychology Today blog Transforming Perspectives.

Landon Schnabel, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology at Cornell University

Landon Schnabel (he/they) is the Rosenthal Assistant Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. His research examines the intersections of religion, gender, sexuality, and politics, with a focus on how these factors shape and are shaped by social inequality and public opinion. Schnabel’s work has appeared in top academic journals and popular outlets like the American Sociological Review and The Washington Post, bridging the gap between scholarly research and public discourse. He is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the Religion Section of the American Sociological Association. Schnabel’s current book project investigates the gendered nature of religions and its implications for gender politics.

Joanna Wuest, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University

Joanna Wuest (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University. Wuest is a sociolegal scholar specializing in LGBTQ+ rights, religion, and health, whose research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the American Political Science Association. She is the author of Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2023), which was featured on an episode of WNYC’s Radiolab. She is currently writing a book on how “dark money” and religious liberty legal organizations have shaped social welfare, civil rights, and health policy. Her popular writing has appeared in outlets including The Nation, Boston Review, and Dissent, and her academic work has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Social Science & Medicine, Law & Social Inquiry, and other peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.