Ahmad Greene-Hayes Named New Managing Editor of the Journal of Africana Religions
Dr. Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Associate Professor of African American Religious Studies at Harvard Divinity School, has been named managing editor of the Journal of Africana Religions.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to step into the role of managing editor for the Journal of Africana Religions,” Greene-Hayes said. “My profound appreciation goes to the journal, and especially to its visionary co-founders, Dr. Sylvester Johnson and Dr. Edward Curtis IV, along with co-editor Dr. Danielle Boaz. They have truly carved out an indispensable path for incisive and expansive theoretical and methodological shifts in Africana religious studies, and I am excited to contribute to its ongoing legacy.”
Greene-Hayes is an accomplished scholar, teacher, and mentor. He is the author of Underworld Work: Black Atlantic Religion-Making in Jim Crow New Orleans (University of Chicago Press, 2025) and has published essays in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Nova Religio, GLQ, Journal of African American History, and “Shots of Deliverance: Mother Estella Boyd’s Healing Hands and Global Black Pentecostal Reach” in the Journal of Africana Religions. Greene-Hayes is completing his second book project provisionally titled, Little Richard’s Witness: Liner Notes on Black Religion and Sexuality, which is under contract with Penguin Random House in the Significations Black biography series edited by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Greene-Hayes’s research and teaching interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American religious history; race, sexuality, and religion in the Americas; interdisciplinary archive studies; and theories and methods in the study of religion and Black Studies.
He has held prestigious fellowships from Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, Yale’s LGBT Studies program, the American Society of Church History, and Princeton University’s “The Crossroads Project: Black Religious Histories, Communities, and Cultures.”
In 2022, he was inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College. He was elected to the Society for the Study of Black Religion in 2023.
“We are thrilled to welcome the creative, accomplished, and innovative Ahmad Greene-Hayes as managing editor,” said co-editors Danielle Boaz and Sylvester Johnson. “He brings a unique vision for the study of Africana religions and excellent managerial skills to the post.”
Greene-Hayes is slated to begin his work as managing editor on October 1, 2025. Interim managing editor Edward E. Curtis IV, the journal’s co-founder, will become editor emeritus after a transition period.
The Journal of Africana Religions, distributed by the Scholarly Publishing Collective and Project MUSE, publishes critical scholarship on Africana religions, including the religious traditions of African and African Diasporic peoples as well as religious traditions influenced by the diverse cultural heritage of Africa. It is co-sponsored by the Association for the Study of Worldwide African Diaspora and the African Association for the Study of Religions.
Banner photo of Ahmad Greene-Hayes by Justin Knight.