Todne Thomas

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Todne Thomas is an assistant professor of African American religions at Harvard Divinity School. In collaboration with Afro-Caribbean and African American congregants, Thomas conducts research on the racial, spatial, and familial dynamics of black Christian communities in the United States. Conceptually, her work integrates religious studies and critical race and kinship theories to understand the racial and moral scripts of evangelicalism and neoliberalism.

During her fellowship year, Thomas is completing a monograph that examines the familial and spiritual experiences of black evangelicals in the Atlanta metropolitan area. She will also conduct ethnographic research on contemporary black church arson and the neoliberal displacement of black sacred space.

Thomas has a PhD in sociocultural anthropology and has authored peer-reviewed articles for Anthropology and Humanism, the Journal of African American Studies, and the Journal of Africana Religions. She has also coedited, with Asiya Malik and Rose E. Wellman, New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties across the Abrahamic Religions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). In addition to university funding, her work has received support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and Virginia Humanities.