Roanoke College
Candidate for Vice President (2024)/President (2025)
Candidate statement
It is a privilege to stand for election for Vice President of the American Catholic Historical Association. Like many of you, I have been a member of the ACHA since my graduate student days. I came to present my first academic paper, and I retained my membership because of the warm welcome I received and the mentorship I was offered at multiple stages of my academic life. I have become more heavily involved in recent years, sitting on the ACHA Program committee for three years, and chairing the committee for the New York City conference in 2019. If you attended that or our most recent conference, you will know how enthusiastic I can get about an ACHA raffle.
I bring an atypical perspective to the ACHA; I’m a Catholic studies scholar who works outside of either Catholic institutions or major Catholic studies programs. As a historian at a small liberal arts college, I am keenly aware of the shifting landscape which confronts us. I view the ACHA as a space where we can model collaboration, interdisciplinarity, inclusion, and the application of our research to the pressing problems of our communities. But I also believe that the ACHA has added charisms of hospitality, centeredness, and care. These are evident to me in the ways that the organization has managed to navigate changes to how we gather, the initiatives we pursue, and the needs we amplify. I would be proud to continue the work of our leadership as we continue to foster the academic lives of our colleagues in Catholic Studies at each stage of their careers.