2024 Barth Graduate Student Colloquium

Dirk J. Smit

Dirk J. Smit holds an MA (philosophy, Stellenbosch), DTh (Stellenbosch), DPhil (h.c.) (Umeå, Sweden), and PhD (h.c.) (Protestant Theological University, Groningen). 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.

Morgan Bell

Morgan D. Bell is a PhD candidate in theology at the University of Toronto (Emmanuel College). His doctoral research critically retrieves Karl Barth’s doctrine of the First Person of the Trinity in conversation with contemporary trinitarian dogmatics and gender theory. Bell has served as adjunct faculty at the Vancouver School of Theology (British Columbia) and was recently the Resident Visiting Scholar in Theology at the Atlantic School of Theology (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Ordained to the order of ministry of The United Church of Canada, he serves a congregation in downtown Toronto.

Elizabeth Gatewood

Elizabeth Gatewood is a PhD candidate in Theological Ethics and Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. Her research works within Karl Barth’s theology to articulate a theological account of the household, including its labor, sexual, and material dimensions. She has lived in Aberdeen for the past two years and recently moved home to North Carolina with her husband and children.

Kristoff Reese Grosfeld

Kristoff Reese Grosfeld, ThM ’22, is a PhD student in the department of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. His main area of interest is in the intersection of dogmatic and moral theology focusing particularly on how our doctrines of God and Christology can spur human action in the realm of the political. Because he is a Filipino American, he is interested also in the uses of doctrine and how certain aspects of our doctrine of God, such as omnipotence and providence, can be liberative for everyday Filipinos. Reese’s other research interests include Christian ethics, moral formation, Asian American theology, theology of Karl Barth, and the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo. He holds a BA in Spanish studies and theology from Fordham University, an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and a ThM in systematic theology from Princeton Theological Seminary.

RC Jongte

RC Jongte is a Mizo liberation theologian from the Northeast region of India. He earned his PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2023. In his dissertation, “The Being of the Electing God: The Relevance of Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election for a Liberationist Theological Ontology,” he puts the central liberationist theological tenet of God’s preferential option for the poor in conversation with Barth’s conception of the doctrine of election. Jongte’s areas of research interest include the intersection between dogmatic and liberation theologies, traditional theological loci like the doctrine of God and Christology, political theologies, and Indigenous theologies, particularly of northeast India.

Woo Joong Kang

I am endeavoring to establish a praxis of ethical ventilation and social empathy to confront issues such as racial discrimination, the negation of human dignity, and the deprivation of fellow citizens’ rights. My approach involves exploring Karl Barth’s distinguished theology of reconciliation within the context of my doctoral dissertation. Drawing from my experiences as an ethics lecturer at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in America, a Chaplain Resident at Providence St. John Hospital, and an educational pastor at Graceway Church, I bring a comprehensive understanding of these complex issues. Moreover, in my daily life with my family, I am committed to embodying the essence of reconciliation.

Steve Kim

Rev. Steve (Young Dong) Kim, a 1.5-generation Korean-American ordained Elder in the New York Annual Conference, is deeply committed to innovative approaches to ministry, with a focus on racial justice, peace, and inclusion. He serves as a co-chair of both the Racial Justice Task Force of the Korean Ministry Plan of the United Methodist Church and the Commision on Religion and Race of the New York Annual Conference. He is a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Developmental Inventory (IDI), demonstrating his dedication to inclusion and mutuality. Outside of ministry, Steve cherishes time with his wife Rose, a talented violinist, and their three children, Joseph, Daniel, and Miriel, enjoying board games, dancing, and the joys of parenthood.

Elaina Mair

Elaina Mair is a PhD student in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen. She is writing on 20th century theologians Jürgen Moltmann and Frederick Herzog, who were both influenced by the theology of Karl Barth. Her work interacts with liberation theology, political theology and theological anthropology in asking, “What liberation is there for the oppressor?”

Hannah Scanlon

Rev. Hannah Scanlon is the Chaplain of the Menaul School in Albuquerque, NM. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Calvin College, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and is now a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation explores the intersection of Barth’s Doctrine of Creation and the field of environmental studies, with a particular focus on non-human animals. Hannah delights preaching in Chapel, teaching religion classes and coaching Menaul’s cross country team.

Breno Seabra

Breno Seabra is a PhD student in Theological Studies at Emory University. Breno was born and raised in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Before starting his PhD at Emory, Breno earned a Master of Divinity from Western Theological Seminary. His research explores the intersection between the doctrine of creation, theologies of human identity, and political theology, with a special focus on Brazil’s contemporary social challenges. He is also interested in Christology, Karl Barth’s theological anthropology, trinitarian theology, post-supersessionist theology, liberation theology, and sociology of religion.

Jared Stacy

Jared Stacy (PhD, Aberdeen) recently completed a doctoral dissertation in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. The project deploys Barth and Bonhoeffer to the question and crisis of conspiracism across US History, manifesting particularly in white American evangelicalism on January 6. Anticipated future research trajectories includes theology amidst radicalizing publics/digital architectures and an AAR presentation this Fall on doctrines of hell as sites of violence in varied Christian extremisms.

Catherine Tobey

Grateful to be a part of the community at the University of Aberdeen, Rev. Catherine Tobey is working on a PhD in theological ethics. Her research considers children to be a dynamic key, not only in Barth’s theology but in the Church’s understanding and enactment of the Kingdom of God. She is a graduate of Whitworth University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Minister of Word & Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Abel Veres

Abel Veres is a graduate master’s student in theology at Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. He studied theology at Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg in 2020–21 and in 2022 he began studying Philosophy and Religious Studies (BA) at Károli Gáspár University. His doctoral research project is entitled “The Ethics of Religionless Christianity: Ethical Consequences of Wolf Krötke’s Theology of Revelation.” His primary research interests are the possibilities of Karl Barth’s and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology in the post-Christian world, in particular Barth and Bonhoeffer’s theology of revelation and Barth’s theology of election as a constructive approach to contemporary Christian ethics. His other interests include covenant theology, theological anthropology, the ethics of technology, the dramatic nature of the apocalypse and the theological issues of church-state relations.

Ed Watson

Ed is a Theology PhD student in Yale’s Religious Studies Department. His research focuses on whether theological reflection can transform the fundamental conditions of possibility for thinking racializing difference. He is currently working on a dissertation entitled ‘Shadows of Grace,’ exploring this question in the context of 19th century Protestant writings on grace and Christian formation.

Jennifer Webster

Jennifer Webster is a PhD candidate in Theology at the University of Cambridge, St. John’s College. Her dissertation is (currently) entitled The Theological Determinants of Karl Barth’s Ontological Model of Ecclesiological Time: Christ, Scripture and Tradition. She is the Associate Director of the Charles Simeon Institute and Dean of the Lay School of Theology at St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee, FL. She has also completed an M.A. in Church History from the University of Nottingham. She has a passion for educating Christians and congregations in theology and church history, and sees quality education as fundamental for developing healthy and whole followers of Jesus Christ. She is married to Nate, a licensed mental health counselor and they have a daughter, Islay Rose.

Kaitlyn Dugan

Kaitlyn Dugan is the Director of the Center for Barth Studies, which involves managing the daily operations, programs, and conferences of the center as well as curating, preserving, maintaining, and developing Princeton Theological Seminary’s Barth Special Research Collection. She is grant co-author for the $300,000 Scholarly Editions and Scholarly Translations grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Karl Barth Translator’s Seminar in 2019. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and political science from Taylor University, a Master of Arts in theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and received her PhD in systematic theology from the University of Aberdeen in June 2022. Her dissertation research focuses on developing a constructive theological account of death informed by Pauline apocalyptic theology and is titled “The Enduring Enemy: Towards An Apocalyptic Theology of Death.” She is currently working towards publishing her dissertation. Kaitlyn is a member of St. James Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Harlem, New York City.

Check out her Twitter here: twitter.com/kaitdugan.