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PhD Candidate | Practical Theology
Austin Crenshaw Shelley is a PhD candidate in Practical Theology with a concentration in Homiletics. Her research centers on the performative aspects of preaching as they are embodied in and through the context of Deaf culture and Deaf worship style. Her broader interests include the witness of many non-traditional forms of the proclamation of the gospel—world music and dance, unspoken liturgy, and the preaching practices of homileticians who use alternative speech or adaptive speech technologies to communicate the creativity and steadfast love of a God in Whose image all people are made—to reclaim and to mirror the incarnation of the Word inherent to the oral tradition of the Hebrew scriptures.
Austin has worked as a public school educator, teaching visual art, English language and literature, Spanish, and Latin, and spearheading a magnet program for the instruction of neurodivergent, gifted students. She has also served in ministerial calls in the church, first as a director of youth ministries at Lake Murray Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, then as an associate pastor for Christian education at The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, and as senior pastor and head of staff alongside the congregation of Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh.
In 2014, Austin joined the governing board of Young Clergy Women International, serving as managing editor of Fidelia, the organization’s online magazine, until her graduation from the group in 2019. She enjoys writing poetry, sermons, and articles for various publications, including The Christian Century, Connections, and Preaching as Resistance: Voices of Hope, Justice, and Solidarity, edited by Phil Snider. Austin holds a BA in studio art and English from Columbia College, and an MDiv and ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary. She is an ordained minister of Word and sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
