BONDS Peer Mentors and Area Assistants

BONDS (Building Opportunities and Networks for Divinity Students) Peer Mentors

The BONDS Peer Mentorship Program is designed to help incoming University of Chicago Divinity School students with the transition to graduate school and build community both within the new cohorts and across the Divinity School. Peer mentors engage with incoming students through office hours, one-on-one meetings, regular email check-ins, and social events. BONDS mentors are always available to answer questions about campus and student life, moving to Chicago, experience with courses, languages, etc, or connect students to other resources in the Dean of Students Office or the University.

Brian Carter is a third-year dual-degree student in the MDiv/MSW program. He is studying Islamic mysticism, Islamic Psychology, and philosophies of self. He is interested in chaplaincy and therapy and how to incorporate religious understandings of self and our relationship to “other” into the psychotherapeutic alliance. In his free time, he enjoys movies, theater, swing dancing, activism, and other organized trouble-making.

Lydia Herndon is a PhD candidate in the History of Christianity who is working on a dissertation about laughter and joking in early Christian literature. She loves the Swift Hall community (especially the Dean’s Forum and 4-8s) and enjoys learning about the ideas her fellow students are excited about. Outside of the Divinity School, Lydia enjoys cooking and baking new recipes, catching a movie at Doc Films, and staying up to date on the latest Love Island series.

Mahtab Mahmoudi is a second-year PhD student in the Anthropology of Religion track. She holds a BA in Sociology from the University of Tehran and an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School, concentrating on the anthropology of religion. During her BA and MA, she conducted fieldwork with women studying and working in state-run seminaries in Iran, exploring questions of Islamic education, ethical self-cultivation, labor, governance, state, motherhood, and affective politics. Currently, she is interested in the anthropological study of Islam, secularity, ethics, labor, law, bureaucracy, and governance. When not studying at the Regenstein library, she enjoys watching TV series and movies, reading novels, cycling on the lakefront trail, cooking, and hanging out with friends.

Mukti Patel is a PhD student studying South Asian Religions with a focus on Sanskrit and Gujarati literature and history. Mukti is originally from Toronto and grew up in Virginia, always within two miles of a body of water. When not studying, Mukti likes to make art in any medium possible-- painting with coffee, calligraphy with crushed berry ink, sculpting with wire-- you name it. She is also an enthusiastic plant mom, currently most proud of a miniature rose bush growing in her kitchen. You can usually find her at a coffee shop ordering anything but coffee.

Sri Perangur (he/they/any) is a second-year MA student specializing in Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada medieval literature and music. Besides leading the Philosophy of Religion Club and pouring latte art at Grounds of Being, Sri actively performs classical South Indian violin and writes (only moderately embarrassing) poetry. Outside of academics and art, they possess an impressively useless and inexorably growing wealth of knowledge about raw denim, competitive Pokémon, and Slay the Spire.

Elaina Reese is a BONDS Peer Mentor and an Open Space Co-Coordinator for the 2025-2026 academic year. She is a student in the MDiv program interested in chaplaincy within a medical setting. Originally from Buffalo, New York, Elaina found her way to the Divinity School after educational and work experiences in the fields of nuclear materials and pediatric clinical trials. When she's not studying, Elaina likes to share meals with friends, write letters, shop at Korean grocery stores, and play Mario Kart.

Grace Rotermund says "welcome to Chicago!" A second year in the Master of Arts in Divinity program, she focuses on late antique and medieval art & architecture in the Caucasus region (mostly Armenia), highlighting the little-studied role of Zoroastrianism in the area's rich religious environment. Outside of academia, you'll find Grace at a concert, hanging out with friends, staying active with yoga and sports, or working at the Regenstein Library Special Collections — and if you ever go outside of Hyde Park with them, you'll notice the first thing they usually do when they enter a building is look up to check out the ceiling (an art lover through and through.)

alicehank winham (we/wer) is a PhD student in the Philosophy of Religion track, focusing on Buddhist philosophy in conversation with contemporary philosophies oriented towards liberation. We holds a BA Philosophy and Theology and MSt in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies from University of Oxford, where we worked on neo-Pragmatist approaches to Candrakīrti as counters to naive Realism, and countering Nihilistic approaches to Nāgārjuna through dispelling the possibility that he wielded śūnyatā with arithmetic connotations of zero. Currently, alicehank is interested in exploring questions of how 'what and who counts' arises in our field of perception in relation to individuation, differentiation, and our use of logic, while continuing to practice philosophical witchood, yoga, mediation, communal and environmental care, and insurrectionist ethics.

OPEN SPACE COORDINATORS

Hart Lang is a second year M.Div. and one of two Open Space Co-Coordinators. Originally from South Carolina, he’s been an artist and facilitator in Chicago for the larger part of the last ten years and remains eternally curious about all the ways creativity facilitates community building. He has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, a B.A. in Anthropology and Philosophy and an abiding devotion to Lake Michigan.

Area Assistant

Kristen Kitch is a second year MA student at the Divinity School, where she studies ancient religion and comparative mythology. Her interests explore how stories, especially origin stories and creation myths, from the ancient Mediterranean world express deep cultural anxieties and shape communal identity. She’s especially interested in the crossover between biblical and classical traditions, and how these narratives continue to influence the ways people think about the world today. Originally from Lancaster, PA, Kristen is committed to making scholarship both accessible and engaging beyond the academy. She also serves as a shift leader at Grounds of Being and lives in Hyde Park with her silly cat, Zebedee.

Tutors

Yousef Aly is a PhD student in the Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of Chicago. An Egyptian-Canadian, he holds a Bachelor's in Islamic Studies from Al-Azhar University, a Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of Windsor, and an MA from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on Islamic law, legal theory, and Qurʾanic studies, with a particular emphasis on the Shāfiʿī school. He continues to work on projects in Islamic finance and family law, and previously taught Islamic Law at Windsor Law. Outside of academia, he enjoys translating Arabic texts, biking, and lakeshore walks.

Garrett Lincoln Ashlock is a first-year PhD student on the History of Christianity track. He holds a BA in Middle East Studies from the University of Michigan and an MA from the University of Chicago Divinity School. Garrett is captivated by the relationship between Christianity and Platonism. He has focused on so-called “Christian Platonists” in the Greek, Armenian, and Syriac traditions, especially the Dionysian Corpus and Origen of Alexandria and his followers. From Elizabethtown, Kentucky, Garrett enjoys hiking, fishing, horticulture, natural history, bluegrass and country music, cooking Kentucky staples like barbeque, fried chicken, and cornbread, Cincinnati Reds baseball, and reading books fictional and non-fictional, especially those concerning the American South.

Admissions and Recruitment Assistant

Fann Shar Linn is a second-year MA student from Malaysia who is interested in the formation and transformation of religious identities in Southeast Asia. Her time at the Divinity School has been an unexpected but deeply fulfilling detour after a decade-long career in public policy. Outside of school (and cat parent duties), she spends her time searching for good music, good food and good fiction – and would be more than happy to share all three with anyone who’s up for coffee or a lakeside walk!