Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity
2026-27 Yang Visiting Scholars
For the academic year 2026-27, HDS is delighted to announce two Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity. They will conduct research, write, and teach, or co-teach one course.
Candace Lukasik is an anthropologist of religion whose research explores the transnational politics of violence, migration, race, and indigeneity among Christian communities in the Middle East—specifically Egypt and Iraq—and their US diasporas. She is the author of Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire (NYU Press, 2025; winner of the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies) and co-editor of Anthropologies of Orthodox Christianity: Theology, Politics, Ethics (Fordham University Press, 2025). Starting in Fall 2027, she will be Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Her current book project examines how Assyrians in Iraq and the diaspora navigate a defining tension: internationally recognized as a persecuted Christian minority, they increasingly assert themselves as an indigenous people with ancestral claims to land and presence. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Detroit and northern Iraq, it asks how the global tendency to frame Middle Eastern Christians in terms of persecution obscures longer histories of dispossession—and what Assyrian claims to indigeneity reveal about the entanglement of Christianity and rootedness across the region.
Olabisi Obamakin comes to HDS as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University, UK. She holds a doctorate in New Testament Studies from the University of Exeter, UK, and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).
She is the author of Afropean Biblical Studies: Constructing a Nigerian/British Women's Hermeneutic (Brill, 2026), a book that offers fresh readings of biblical characters such as Herodias’s daughter (Mark 6:17–28; Matthew 14:3–12) and the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair (Luke 7:36–50). She has discussed her work with multiple public audiences, including at St Paul’s Cathedral and on the BBC.
Drawing on a range of Afropean cultural expressions and practices, particularly within a Nigerian/British context, her current research employs an Afropean hermeneutic to interpret the New Testament in ways that resonate with Afrodiasporic Christian communities in Europe.
Yang Visiting Scholar Responsibilities
Each visiting scholar teaches one course (either in the fall or in the spring semester) and presents their research in a public lecture. Yang Visiting Scholars are required to be in full-time residence at Harvard Divinity School while carrying out their proposed research projects during the academic year.
Any publication and/or research resulting from the stay at Harvard Divinity School must be credited to the Yang Visiting Scholars Program in World Christianity at Harvard Divinity School.
Eligibility
Positions are open to early career and senior scholars with doctorates in the fields of religion and to those with primary competence in other humanities, social science, and public policy fields who demonstrate a serious interest in world Christianity and hold appropriate degrees in those fields. Selection criteria emphasize the quality of the applicant's research prospectus, outlining objectives, methods, and publication plans, the expansion of expertise offered through HDS courses, and the significance of the contribution of the proposed research to the study of world Christianity.
Compensation
The appointment will come with compensation commensurate with experience. Salary, as well as some research and travel funds will be provided.
Housing possibilities: Harvard University Housing. Please note that the Office for Academic Affairs is unable to assist with housing and other lodging requests.
Additional Information
The appointment entitles the visiting scholar to a Harvard University ID card (which allows access to the Harvard University Libraries) for the duration of the appointment. Visiting scholars are cordially invited to attend all HDS community and public events. However, HDS is unable to offer courtesy library cards, or appointments, for any additional members of a scholar's family.
A visiting scholar is considered an independent researcher and may not register for and take classes for credit. For information on how to audit classes (not for credit) at HDS, please consult the instructions on auditing
For further questions, and/or inquiries, please contact the Yang Scholars Program Office in the Office of Academic Affairs.
Past Yang Visiting Scholars
Please visit Past Yang Visiting Scholars to read about previous years' Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity.
Spring 2025 Event
Christian Nationalism in Global Perspective
A conversation with David Hempton and one of the 2024-25 Yang Visiting Scholars, Nilay Saiya.
This event took place on February 27, 2025. Read a full transcript of the spring 2025 event.
Spring 2024 Event
Explorations in World Christianity
A conversation with David Hempton and the 2023-24 Yang Visiting Scholars, Nathanael Homewood, Tom Santa Maria, and Gina A. Zurlo.
This event took place on April 11, 2024. Read a full transcript of the spring 2024 event.
Spring 2023 Event
World Christianity, Christianity in the West: Continuities and Differences
An online panel discussion with Francis X. Clooney, S. J., and the 2022-23 Yang Visiting Scholars, Heather Mellquist Lehto and Ashok Kumar Mocherla.
This event took place on April 18, 2023. A full transcript of the spring 2023 event is available on the HDS website.