Executive 2023-2024
Sarah Kathleen Johnson
President
sarah.kathleen.johnson@ustpaul.ca
Sarah Kathleen Johnson is Assistant Professor of Liturgy and Pastoral Theology at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario. She is a practical theologian who studies Christian worship in the context of a changing North American religious landscape. Her research at the intersection of liturgical studies and sociology of religion employs qualitative methods that value everyday religious experience. Commitments to interrogating the relationship between liturgy and ethics and engaging ecumenically across Christian traditions ground her research, teaching, and leadership. She served on the editorial team for the Mennonite hymnal and worship book Voices Together (2020).
Nick Olkovich
Vice-President
Nick Olkovich is Associate Professor and Marie Anne Blondin Chair in Catholic Theology at St. Mark’s College, Vancouver, BC. His research focuses primarily on the relationship between ethics, politics and religion in democratic contexts and on a variety of issues in theological anthropology, fundamental ecclesiology, and foundational theology. His teaching and research is influenced by the work of philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan.
Darren Dias
Past-President
Darren Dias is the Executive Director of the Toronto School of Theology and Associate Professor of systematic theology at the University of St Michael’s College. His areas of interest include contemporary inter-religious relations and emerging theological methods.
Christina Conroy
Secretary
Christina Conroy is Associate Professor of Christian Theology at Ambrose University. Christina works in the area of contemplative and constructive theology with expertise in residential school history (and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada) as well as indigenous-settler relations. Current research interests include the intersection of neuroscience, epigenetics and trauma with Christian theology as well as Indigenous-settler work on climate change.
Ryan Turnbull
Treasurer
Having grown up on a cattle ranch in western Manitoba, Ryan Turnbull has a deep interest in the intersection of theology, decolonization, ecology, place, and friendship. Ryan holds a BA and MA in Theology from Providence University College and Theological Seminary and is a lay-minister in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land as well as the former Director of CHAI Immigrant Centre. He is pursuing a PhD in Theology and Religion funded by the Stanley Ray Scholarship at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, U.K., focusing on Christian theologies of place and their colonial entanglements. Ryan teaches theology at Thorneloe University and has guest-lectured in a number of academic and church contexts.
Christopher Hrynkow
Communications Coordinator
Christopher Hrynkow is Professor and Graduate Chair in the Department of Religion and Culture, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. His teaching, research, and community outreach draw upon a passion for ecological, peace, and political theologies. Hrynkow is also serving as Co-Director of St. Thomas More College’s Irene and Doug Schmeiser Centre for Faith, Reason, Peace, and Justice.
Fiona Li
Student Representative
Fiona Li is a doctoral candidate at the newly federated Regis-St. Michael’s Faculty of Theology at the University of Toronto. Broadly speaking, her research focuses on Mariology and feminist theology. She is also the Associate Director of the Msgr. John Mary Fraser Centre for Practical Theology, which is housed at Regis College.
Néstor Medina
Dignity, Justice, and Justice Committee Chair
Néstor Medina is a Guatemalan-Canadian Scholar and Assistant professor of Religious Ethics and Culture. He engages the field of ethics from contextual, liberationist, intercultural, and Post and Decolonial perspectives. He studies the intersections between people’s cultures, histories, ethnoracial relations, and forms of knowledge in religious and theoethical traditions. He also studies Pentecostalism in the Americas. He is currently working on the ethnoracial relations during colonial Latin America and the influence of religion in those relations.
Meghan Bowen
Program Coordinator
Meghan Bowen is a PhD candidate at Regis College (Toronto). Her research seeks to reconsider Augustine’s theology of marriage within his socio-historical context as a means of advancing current theological discussions of marriage and of sexual ethics. Further areas of interest include liturgical and sacramental theology, especially the intersection of liturgy and ethics as a locus for faith formation. Along with an MA Theology, Bowen also holds an MA Ethnomusicology.
