The Divinity School is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Emily D. Crews (PhD'21) as the Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. In this position, Dr. Crews will lead the Center’s partnerships across the University, the city of Chicago, and beyond, setting the Center’s research and programming agenda and overseeing operations.

“Dr. Crews brings a wealth of experience in many contexts to this vital role,” said James T. Robinson, Dean of the Divinity School. “Perhaps more importantly, she brings an exciting vision about the future of the Center. The Center, and the Divinity School, will continue to find innovative ways to bridge religious studies scholarship and contemporary public concerns under Dr. Crews’ leadership.”

Dr. Crews joined the Marty Center as Assistant Director in 2022, after teaching at The University of Alabama and the University of Chicago. As Assistant Director she not only managed the Center’s research agenda and its partnerships with media organizations but also piloted the Center’s inaugural Author Talks series, a collaboration with the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. She also led the Junior Fellows Program, the Public Religion Residence Fellowships, and conceived and ran the capstone conference on Religion and Reproductive Politics.

A graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School's PhD program in the History of Religions, Emily is a scholar of Christianities in Africa and the United States. Her scholarly research explores the ways that people's religious lives are connected to their ideas about gender, race, and the body. She is especially interested in how Christian communities and individuals think and behave vis-a-vis reproductive issues like pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, childbirth, and motherhood, and how those issues shape their perspectives on what it means to be a good religious person.

Emily is the co-editor of Remembering Jonathan Z. Smith: A Career and Its Consequence (with Russell McCutcheon, 2020) and African Diaspora Religions in 5 Minutes (with Curtis J. Evans, forthcoming 2024). She has published scholarly articles in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Religion and Theology, and numerous edited volumes, as well as articles for the public in Sightings and The Local Palate. She was recently a scholar-consultant on the Court Theatre’s production of The Gospel at Colonus.