The past few months have seen some wonderful successes and exciting developments in the research programme that I use this site to catalogue. Below I detail a few new projects and upcoming events for those who encounter this space and are curious about my work.
Postdoctoral Fellowship
From Fall 2021 to this past month I have been a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, where I began work on my next book project – Critique of Conspiracism – which shows deep resonances between religious and conspiratorial thinking and provides a basis for critiquing the conspiracist form of life by drawing from political theology, critical theory, and critical use of the internal family systems paradigm. Now that the fellowship has come to an end, I am turning my attention to my full time work at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University (with gratitude for my postdoc supervisor Pamela Klassen, whose work on health and religion has been vital for my turn toward this new field of study).
The Centre for Social Accountability
I am now a Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Social Accountability at NOSM U, and I work on an interdisciplinary team exploring socially accountable research methods and research into social accountability (especially in the context of medical education). This means that I work on grant writing, communications, research engagement, and publishing, while supporting doctors and health care professionals who undertake research in northern, rural, and remote contexts.
A month or so ago, I returned from the International Congress on Academic Medicine in Quebec City, where I was involved in meetings on social accountability and accreditation, funded by a SSHRC Connections grant that I coauthored earlier in the year. Combined with my work with Towards Unity for Health (TUFH) I will be coordinating a series of symposia on social accountability and accreditation this Spring and Summer with the leads of the ISAASC working group.
I am also fortunate enough to be teaching a spring intensive course in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University on “Research in Education for Change.” The course teaches research methods and design in the context of social justice and critical pedagogy, and it has been a great opportunity to teach graduate students for the first time (and to work through George Steiner’s Lessons of the Masters, Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Shawn Wilson’s Research is Ceremony).
Postsecular History
It’s been over a year since my first book was published with Palgrave Macmillan (now owned by Springer Nature), and I have just learned that the symposium on the book has been published in a print issue of Political Theology 24.3 (2023): 338-358. See here for an open access link to my response to the contributions by Travis Kroeker, Jen Otto, and Pamela Klassen.
Ontologies of Violence
My second book is nearing publication with Brill in an exciting new series on public and political theologies, and I have just corrected the first proofs and put together an index. I am excited to be speaking on the book’s reframing of violence next week at the Northern Health Research Conference in a presentation titled “Social Accountability and Methodological Violence: Reframing Socially Accountable Research.”
Critique of Conspiracism
I have recently signed a contract for my third book with the Conspiracy Theories series at Routledge, edited by Peter Knight and Michael Butter. It’s thrilling to have the coming year to finish the manuscript, and even more so to be included in such a foundational series. I am looking forward to sharing some of my preparatory work with the fine folks at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies, where I am also an affiliate.
American Academy of Religion Meetings 2023
This fall I will be traveling to Texas (!) to the American Academy of Religion annual meetings, where I will give two papers: “Social Accountability, Health Care, and Religion: Social Bonds of Public Trust between Secularity and Religion” (in the bioethics unit), and “Transgression and Accountability: Boundaries and Violence in Miriam Toews’ Women Talking and Jenny Hval’s Girls Against God” (at the Mennonite Scholars and Friends forum).
The former paper will be the foundation for my future work on social accountability as a critical theory of society based on social bonds of public trust, and the latter paper will contribute to the discourse on Mennonite/s Writing (for example, see this forthcoming book by Danny Cruz, which I was very happy to endorse).
Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies (New Series) with Pandora Press
Lastly, my work as Director of Pandora Press has kept me busy on evenings and weekends since mid-2021, and the most exciting part has been the re-launch of the Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies Series. As academic editor of the series – in connection with the new editorial board – I am very excited to announce that the first three volumes (which have been in-progress for the past two years) are now published.
- Volume 1. Gary Waite, Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531-1660. 2023. (An expansion and revision of the 2021 Zeman Lectures.) 265pp.
- Volume 2. Cornelius J. Dyck, Hans de Ries: A Study in Second Generation Dutch Anabaptism. Introduction by Mary S. Sprunger. 2023. (A new edition of a 1968 dissertation, and the only book-length treatment of Hans de Ries in English.) 375pp.
- Volume 3. Edmund Pries, Anabaptist Oath Refusal: Basel, Bern, and Strasbourg, 1525-1538. 2023. (The most comprehensive study of the Anabaptist refusal to swear oaths.) 485pp.



The series has been a labor of love that provides me with a steady foot in the Mennonite Studies world, and I’m thrilled to say that there are several more volumes in preparation, including:
- Volume 4. J. Lawrence Burkholder, Mennonite Ethics: From Isolation to Engagement. 2nd Edition. Ed. Lauren Friesen. 2023. 600 pp.
- Volume 5. Gottfried Seebaß, Müntzer’s Heir: The Work, Life, and Theology of Hans Hut. Trans. Amalie Enns. 2023. 600 pp.
- Volume 6. Linda A. Huebert Hecht, Women in Early Austrian Anabaptism: Their Days, Their Stories. 2nd Edition 2023. 320 pp.
It’s been educating to take on the editorial review, editing, typesetting, design, and distribution of the Pandora Press backlist and this series, and I am excited for the next three volumes beyond those planned for this year – the most exciting of which is a new Anabaptist history textbook, which should be ready for 2025.