Elon University is a leading university in undergraduate research, and the Religious Studies Department includes several nationally recognized experts in Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies.

The Department encourages interested and committed students to conduct independent research with a faculty mentor, including Honors and Fellows projects for students.

If you are interested in a particular topic, please see the interests of our faculty mentors below and contact the appropriate professor.

Faculty Mentoring Interests

Amy Allocco

I am happy to work with students interested in researching topics in South Asian religions (particularly Hinduism and Islam); gender and religion; religion, health, and healing (including in/fertility and assisted reproductive technologies); ritual and performance studies; and contemporary India (especially sexuality, women’s and gender issues). I am also interested in mentoring students who wish to undertake ethnographic research or who may want to conduct fieldwork with transnational/diaspora South Asian religious communities.

Geoffrey Claussen

I am happy to mentor students interested in a range of Jewish Studies areas, especially in connection with issues of ethics, theology, Jewish philosophy, contemporary American Judaism, or Jewish women’s/gender studies.

Lynn Huber

I am willing to mentor students in the areas of New Testament literature; the construction of gender, sexuality, and family in early Christianity; ancient and medieval biblical interpretation (hermeneutics); feminist and queer approaches to the Bible; interpretation of the Bible in art; ancient and modern apocalyptic language and metaphor.

Ariela Marcus-Sells

I am willing to mentor research projects relating to Islam in any geographical or historical context; religions in Africa or the diaspora; and categories of religion, science and magic.

Andrew Monteith

I am amenable to mentoring students interested in religion in the United States, or North American/Caribbean contexts. Topics related to questions of social regulation, secularism, colonialism, war, history, or religion and popular culture are particularly interesting. I would be interested in assisting students with projects focused on alternative religions (such as Neopaganism, Neoshamanism, psychedelic religions, ecoreligions, etc.), American Christianities, civil religion, atheism, humanism, Afro-Diaspora religions (esp. in the context of the continental U.S., such as Voudou), spiritual-but-not-religious bricolage, and more.

Sheila Otieno

I am happy to work with students whose research interests intersect with mine, i.e., Social Ethics, Africana Religions and Theologies (of Africa & African Diaspora); Women and Gender Studies (in Womanisms, Mujerista, and Black feminisms); Racial and Religious Representation in Sequential Art and Graphic Novels; Black Moral Thought (i.e., Afropolitics, Afropessimisms, and Afrofuturisms); Black Atlantic Religions; Sacred Arts and the Aesthetic Radical Tradition (Hip-Hop + Ritual Dance and Embodied Spiritual Movement); and Race and Religion (especially Social Movements, Activism, and Global Politics) or adjacent to any of the above research areas.

Brian Pennington

I would be happy to mentor students on projects related to religion in South Asia (Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or the Jain or Sikh traditions) as well as South Asian history. Other areas of interest include inter-religious relations, religion and violence, religion and globalization and secularism. I would welcome discussion on research ideas that involve library, archival or ethnographic research in U.S. contexts or abroad.

Toddie Peters

I am happy to work with students interested in any of my areas of research or expertise, these include: globalization, economic ethics, environmental ethics, poverty, inequality, feminist theology and ethics, liberation theology, two-thirds (third) world theology; sexuality; and reproductive ethics.

Pamela Winfield

I am interested in working with students whose topics dovetail with my own areas of research and expertise, namely, East Asian (Chinese, Japanese) religion and visual culture, religion and healing, sacred space in the East Asian context, and comparative mysticism (Hindu-Buddhist and Christian traditions).