Author Bios

Author Bios

NISHA DAGA and GEORGE KODIMATTAM JOSEPH

Nisha Daga is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the School of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, India. She is an alumna of the University of Delhi, India. Her research interests encompass Indian Philosophy, Jainism, Ethics and Technology, Applied Ethics, and Bioethics. Her recent scholarly contribution includes the publication “Big Data and Bigger Dilemmas: Ethical Concerns of Data in Healthcare,” featured in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (2024). Additionally, her paper titled “Living Under the Stare: Ethical Implications of AI Technologies in Surveillance Capitalism” has been accepted for presentation at the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Visual and Signal-Based Systems (AVSS 2025).

George Kodimattam Joseph (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in ethics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, Kanpur, India, in 2011. He is an Associate Professor with the School of Liberal Arts, IIT Jodhpur, Jodhpur, India. His research focuses on applied ethics, philosophy of life sciences, sociopolitical ethics, sustainability studies, biomedical ethics, and ethics and technology. (Based on document published on 24 May 2023).

CHRIS DURANTE

Dr. Chris Durante is an Associate Professor of Theology at Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey. Durante’s primary research and teaching interests are in Religion, Ethics, Science & Society broadly construed to include: political moral theology, ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, ecological theology and environmental ethics, ethics, as well as religion, healthcare, and bioethics. In addition to his university affiliation, Durante is also a longstanding Fellow of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights in Rome, Italy, where he primarily serves on the organizing committee of the Bioethics, Multiculturalism and Religion project that provides a forum for interfaith and intercultural dialogue and collaboration on a variety of bioethical issues. As a result of his involvement in this project, Durante has served as managing editor for two books, respectively entitled: Religious Perspectives on Social Responsibility in Health: Towards a Dialogical Approach (Springer, 2018), as part of the Advancing Global Bioethics Book Series; and: Interreligious Perspectives on Mind, Genes & Self: Emerging Technologies and Human Identity, (Routledge, 2018) as part of the Series on Science and Religion.

HOSSEIN GODAZGAR

Hossein Godazgar is Honorary Professor of Sociology. His research encompasses both theoretical and empirical studies exploring the definition of “religion” in the context of globalization, organizations, social policies and their impacts on various aspects of everyday life. He has disseminated his research findings through a monograph, peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and presentations at national and international conferences.

His current research focuses specifically on the sociological examination of the intersectionality between religion and biomedical ethics. He is currently completing his second monograph, Social Theory, Religion and Bioethics (forthcoming with Brill). His first monograph, The Impact of Religious Factors on Educational Change in Iran: Islam in Policy and Islam in Practice (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008; foreword by James A. Beckford) adopts a Weberian interpretive-sociological approach to explore the paradoxical influence of “Islam” on educational practices in post-revolutionary Iran.

Throughout his career, Professor Godazgar has held academic and research positions at universities in both Iran and the United Kingdom. His significant tenures include the University of Tabriz in Iran (1990-2007) and the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education, previously affiliated with the University of Aberdeen in the United Kingdom (2010-2019), where he retired as Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

IRIA GRAMMENOU

Kyriaki (Iria) Grammenou is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her thesis explored the concept of the subject in David Hume and Samuel Beckett’s work. Her research interests include history of philosophy and political science. In particular, she studies the philosophical concepts of pain physical and suffering as well as the relation between science and religion. She has translated several books on political history and social theory in Greek. She is currently working in secondary education.

KEVIN GRANE

Kevin “Kev” Grane is a PhD Candidate in the joint program at the University of Denver and Iliff School of theology in Colorado, USA. Demographically, Kevin specializes in White Christian Nationalism and religious “nones.” Pedagogically Kevin utilizes a comparative critical lens directed toward decoding lived practices. Kevin highlights comprehensive and necessarily intersectional contexts of religious identity formation for the purposes of giving voice to the ideologically marginalized and appreciating native rationalities.

KAREY ALISON HARWOOD

Karey Harwood is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies with a joint appointment in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on questions of ethics and values in human reproduction, parenthood, and education. Her first book, The Infertility Treadmill: Feminist Ethics, Personal Choice, and the Use of Reproductive Technologies (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), examined both the social context of reproductive technologies and the individual experience of infertility, including the tendency of reproductive technologies to function as a consumeristic rite of passage in coming to terms with infertility. Recent work has focused on egg freezing, repro-genetic technologies, and eugenics. Harwood published her second book, Wake: Why the Battle over Diverse Public Schools Still Matters (Rutgers University Press), in 2024.

HOLLIS PHELPS

Hollis Phelps is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Mercer University. His most recent books are Jesus and the Politics of Mammon (2019) and Theology of Debt (2025), both published by Cascade Books.

GENN RUAN and XIAOQIAN ZHANG

Genn Ruan is a doctoral student in Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. He draws on Foucault and Butler to study power and resistance at the intersection of religion and politics.

Xiaoqian Zhang is a doctoral student in Classics at Northeast Normal University. His research focuses on temple economy and the encounters between Chinese and Western civilizations.

YARON SILVERSTEIN

As a senior lecturer at Hamada Academic College, Dr. Yaron Silverstein specializes in research within Sage literature and contemporary Zionist-religious halacha. His forthcoming book, focusing on the State of Israel in Rabbi Shlomo Goren’s halachic thought, is slated for publication in 2022 on the recommendation of Magnes. Over the past two years, he has notably released scholarly digital editions of the Rosh Hashanah and Sukkah tractates from the Jerusalem Talmud.