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• 1 media/Title Page- FN- x-trial.jpg 2023-02-09T08:55:48-08:00 Researchers and Community Partners 49 Participants and Partners in Decoding Diaspora plain 2025-01-23T10:42:35-08:00

  Directors

  
  Dr. Richard Newton is the project's Research Director and Principal Investigator. He is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. His research focuses on scriptures in social formation, the New Testament in Western imagination, African American cultural history, and theory and method in the study of religion. Newton is the author Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures (Equinox 2020), Editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion and curator of Sowing the Seed: Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture, and Teaching. 
  
  Dr. Jeri Wieringa (2021-2023) was a project consultant during her tenure as director of the REL Digital Lab at the University of Alabama, where she served as Assistant Professor of Religious Studies from 2020-2023. Wieringa is a scholar who works at the intersection of American religious history, data science, and computational methods. In 2019, she published a digital dissertation under the auspices of George Mason University entitle, A Gospel of Health and Salvation: Modeling the Religious Culture of Seventh-day Adventism, 1843 – 1920.   

  
  Project Leads

  2021-2022
  
  
  
  Holly Brand, Text Corpus Assistant
  Marco Pflanzen, OCR Scanning and Metadata  Assistant
  Leah Varnell, OCR Scanning and Metadata Assistant
  
  
  
  
  2022-2023
  
  
  
  Erica Bennett, Podcast Project Lead 
  Carter Sheldon, Podcast Project Assistant
  
  
  
  Casey A'Hearn, Data and Interpretation Lead
  Hannah Alexander, Data and Interpretation Assistant
  
  2023-2024
  
  Casey A'Hearn, Data and Interpretation Lead, Computer Programming Lead
  Hanna Alexander, Data and Interpretation Assistant, 3D Printing Exploratory Research Assistant  (Fall 2023)
  
  
  Trevor Linn, Podcast Project Lead (Spring 2024)
  
  
  
  Katelyn Rials, 3D Printing Engineer and Programming Assistant 
  
  
  Cole Segura, 3D Printing Engineer and Programming Assistant
  
  2024-2025
  
  
  
  Drake Jones, Podcast Project Lead
  
  
  
  Katelyn Rials, Musueum Curation Lead
  
   

   

  Student Research Teams

  Fall 2021, REL226: African Diaspora Religions, University of Alabama, Prof. Richard Newton
  Spring 2023, REL226: African Diaspora Religions, University of Alabama, Prof. Richard Newton
  Fall 2024, REL 502: Public Humanities, University of Alabama, Prof. Nathan Loewen

  Financial Support

  
  
  
  The College Academy of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (CARSCA) provides funding for faculty research, scholarship, and creative activity within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama.
  
  
  
  
  The REL Digital Lab is a collaborative space for digital humanities work in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

  Community Partners

  We are thrilled to have partnered with Scouting America Troop 90b to develop a module of Decoding Diaspora to assist Scouts in earning the Citizenship in Society Merit Badge. We look forward to expanding this opportunity to more Scouts in the future.

  
  
  
  
  
  NAVIGATION

  Table of Contents
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