The Center for Barth Studies has an advisory committee comprised of Princeton Theological Seminary faculty members. The advisory board meets at least twice per academic semester and relays announcements and updates about current scholarly efforts associated with the center to the public. In addition to overseeing the activities and objectives of the center, members of the advisory board are tasked with chairing the Karl Barth conference on a rotating basis.
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker is the Associate Professor of Early Christian Theology. She received degrees from McMaster University, Yale University, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Stewart-Kroeker’s work has been largely focused on Augustine and Augustinianism (both historical and contemporary), virtue ethics, and aesthetics. Her work has been published in the Journal of Religion, Augustinian Studies, Journal of Religious Ethics, and others. Her previous experience includes serving as the Jacques de Senarclens Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Geneva, where she taught classes on emotions and affectivity, forced migrations, ecumenical methodologies, and feminist ethics and theology. She is the author of Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine’s Thought and La Terre Martyre.
Dr. David C. Chao is the director of the Center for Asian American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He holds degrees from Yale University (BA), Regent College (MDiv), and Princeton Theological Seminary (ThM, PhD). Dr. Chao teaches courses on Asian American theology and leads programs that engage Asian American theology and ministry. His research and writing focus on Asian American theology, the liberative uses of Christian doctrine, intersections of Protestant and Catholic dogmatics, and the theology of Karl Barth. Dr. Chao’s forthcoming book, Concursus and Concept Use in Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Providence, is under contract with Routledge. He is the grant co-author and project editor for the first $300,000 translation grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Karl Barth Translator’s Seminar. He also serves on the steering committee of the Reformed Theology and History Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Dr. Chao’s research on Asian American religious life and politics has been funded by The Henry Luce Foundation, the Louisville Institute, and APARRI. He is also under contract with Wiley Blackwell for a forthcoming book on Asian American theology.
George Hunsinger is Princeton Theological Seminary’s Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology. He earned his B.D. from Harvard University Divinity School and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. He served as director of the Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies from 1997 to 2001. He has broad interests in the history and theology of the Reformed tradition and in “generous orthodoxy” as a way beyond the modern liberal/conservative impasse in theology and church. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he was a major contributor to the new Presbyterian catechism. He teaches courses on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Reformed tradition, the theology of the Lord’s Supper, the theology of John Calvin, and classical and recent Reformed theology. He is the founder of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and a delegate to the official Reformed/Roman Catholic International Dialogue (2011–2017). His most recent scholarly contributions include The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge, 2008), Conversational Theology: Essays on Ecumenical, Postliberal, and Political Themes with Special Reference to Karl Barth (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), and Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal (Baker Academic, 2015).
Hanna Reichel is Charles Hodge Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Reichel earned their Dr. theol. in Systematic Theology from Heidelberg University, Germany, after an MDiv in Theology and a BSc in Economics. Prior to coming to Princeton, they taught at Heidelberg University and Halle-Wittenberg University in Germany.
Reichel co-chairs AAR’s Christian Systematic Theology unit and is a member of the steering committee of AAR’s Reformed History and Theology unit, the Karl Barth Society of North America, and the annual International Karl Barth Conference in Switzerland. Reichel co-edits Brill’s Studies in Systematic Theology series and Routledge’s Karl Barth Studies series and chairs Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Barth Studies advisory board. A ruling elder in the PC (USA), Reichel also serves on the Theology Working Group of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, currently preparing for the General Council meeting 2025 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Reichel is the author of Theologie als Bekenntnis: Karl Barths kontextuelle Lektüre des Heidelberger Katechismus and After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design, and the Possibility of Theology.
Dr. Smit holds an MA (Philosophy, Stellenbosch), DTh (Stellenbosch), and PhD (h.c.) (Umeå, Sweden). His appointments include Honorary Professor of the Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany), Extraordinary Professor of Stellenbosch University (South Africa), Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin), and Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Smit comes to Princeton Seminary from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, where he served as Professor of Systematic Theology. Before his appointment to Stellenbosch, Smit served on the faculty at the University of the Western Cape. He has also served as a pastor.
Over the past three decades, Smit has emerged as one of South Africa’s most significant theologians. He has written extensively, in both English and Afrikaans, on the legacy of the Reformed tradition and its relevance to contemporary theological, social, and political questions. He has been a particularly prominent and influential voice in the church’s repudiation of apartheid. Smit was one of the primary authors of the Belhar Confession. Written in 1982 and adopted by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church in 1986, the Belhar Confession boldly declared the sinfulness of apartheid and was a call for justice, reconciliation and unity among all people. It has recently been adopted as part of the PC(USA) Book of Confessions. His teaching, supervision, research and popular writing all draw on experience in ecumenical theology and the church’s public witness in South Africa.