The School of Religious Studies supports a wide range of vibrant student research projects by graduate and undergraduate students. School of Religious Studies students are active in presenting the results of their thesis and course research at national and international conferences, as well as publishing in peer-reviewed journals. They are active as student members of the leading learned societies in the field. On several occasions, the School has also hosted the Eastern International Regional meetings of the American Academy of Religion at which many graduate students present their work. The Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR) welcomes student members from across the university and hosts an annual student-organized international research conference.
Theses in progress
Ph.D. approved proposals
Lisa Blake
Topic: Print, Piety, and the Goddess Mariyamman in Colonial South India
Date approved: September 13, 2016
Supervisors: D. Soneji, Andrea Pinkney, Leslie Orr
Rebecca Coughlin
Topic: Ficino as a Reader of Dionysius the Areopagite: Dionysian themes in the De Vita and Platonic Theology
Date approved: April 6, 2017
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby
Richard Cumming
Topic: Karol Wojtyla on Person and the Act: the Role of Gabriel Marcel in his Philosophical Anthropology
Date approved: March 18, 2014
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow
Marco Dozzi
Topic: The Unconscious Absolute: Schelling’s Phenomenology of Consciousness and Ontology of Self
Date approved: April 19, 2016
Supervisor: Garth Green
Andrew Fulford
Topic: “A Sacred and Holy Rule of Well-Doing”: Richard Hooker’s Interpretation of the Old Testament
Date approved: February 21, 2017
Supervisor: Torrance Kirby
Daniel Giorgio
Topic: Pistis with respect to Jesus Christ and Christians in Galatians
Date approved: November 28, 2017
Supervisor: Ian Henderson, Gerbern Oegema
Young Jang
Topic: Built of a Single Stone: Christian Polis-Ekklesia Envisioned by an Aspiring expert of Religion in Rome
Date approved: February 22, 2018
Supervisor: Ian Henderson
Ryan Jones
Topic: Constituting Lineage in Tibetan Buddhism: The Formation of the Zurmang Kagyu during the Sixteenth Century
Date approved: November 2, 2017
Supervisor: Lara Braistein
Jingjing Li
Topic: Same Road, Different Tracks: A Study of Xuanzang’s Buddhist Phenomenology
Date approved: November 8, 2016
Supervisors: Garth Green, Victor Hori
Paolo Livieri
Topic: Revelation and Being in F.H. Jacobi. A. Critical Edition and Interpretation of F.H. Jacobi’s Divine Things and Their Revelation
Date approved: February 22, 2018
Supervisors: Garth Green, George Di Giovanni
Jean Maurais
Topic: Translated Torah : A Linguistic and Exegetical Commentary on Select Chapters of Greek Deuteronomy
Date approved: April 18, 2017
Supervisor: Gerbern Oegema
Helena Reddington
Topic: Tullal: The People’s Art Form of Kerala
Date approved: March 1, 2018
Supervisors: Samuel Nelson, Leslie Orr
Shaun Retallick
Topic: The Whole as its Parts: The Church and the Individual in the Thought of Jacques Almain
Date approved: May 2, 2017
Supervisor: Douglas Farrow
Bradley Rice
Topic: The Star of Bethlehem as Christ in Early Christian Interpretation
Date approved: February 22, 2018
Supervisor: Ian Henderson
Julia Stenzel
Topic: Compassion as Construct: Compassion in Traditional Buddhist and Contemporary Secular Discourse
Date approved: September 27, 2016
Supervisors: Lara Braitstein, T. Jinpa
Nathan Strunk
Topic: The Metamorphosis of the Transcendental: Philosophy, Theology, and the Truth of the Active Intellect
Date approved: September 7, 2016
Supervisor: Garth Green
Tsoncho Tsonchev
Topic: Person and Communion: The Political Theology of Nikolai Berdyaev
Date approved: March 6, 2018
Supervisors: Daniel Cere, Douglas Farrow
M.A. approved proposals
James Newman
Topic: God, King, and Justice: Monarchic Influences on the Theodicy of Job
Date approved: April 17, 2018
Supervisor: Patricia Kirkpatrick
Matilda Perks
Topic: Courting Lady Mahamudra: Mapping the Sacred in the English Poems of Chögyam Trungpa
Date approved: April 5, 2018
Supervisor: Lara Braitstein
Ali Smears Topic: Mobilizing Shakti: Hindu goddesses and activist campaigns against gender-based violence
Date approved: November 28, 2017
Co-Supervisors: Andrea Pinkney, Hamsa Stainton