When people ask me how I became interested in religious studies, my favorite answer is a story I’m not actually in. Before I was even a thought, my parents met at a New Year’s party in North Carolina because my dad complimented my mom’s Advent wreath. Their meeting is the exemplary example of how religion has been a part of my life since before I was born. Growing up immersed in a Roman Catholic community in Durham, North Carolina – through school, family, and friendships – I experienced firsthand how deeply faith can influence people’s lives. However, because my peers and I were so used to this religious immersion, religion class was not special to us. While attending Catholic elementary school, our religion period was understood to be 45 minutes where one could goof off, do other work, or chat with friends without any real consequences. The most exciting class we had was our skit of the Last Supper, chugging our plastic cups of grape juice and toasting saltines over candles when our teacher wasn’t looking. In sixth grade, though, our brand-new teacher decided to kick off the year with a new kind of lesson: monsters in the Old Testament. I found myself enchanted by the passages he was reading; in all my years of attending mass and going to a Catholic school, I had never heard these stories. My classmates were devastated at our loss of free time; I became enamored with this whole new world.
I decided to be a middle school religion teacher in my seventh-grade year. This adapted as I went on to Catholic high school, realizing what I really wanted was to be a high school teacher. Little did I know that my college experience in Appalachian State University’s Religious Studies program would once again shift my perspective. Joining Randall Reed’s research group, I entered the emerging world of religion and artificial intelligence. As I developed coding skills and learned to prompt engineer, AI became inseparable from my focus on Catholic worship. When ChatGPT publicly released in November 2022 – almost exactly halfway through my college experience – I was enthusiastic about the burgeoning topics of research this tool provided. Questions around Catholic devotional practices grew more complicated when I questioned how resources like saint-based chatbots (my thesis project, readable here) and AI art generators could be utilized in worship.
As graduation loomed in the not-so-distant future, I turned to graduate school with a hopeful eye to continue exploring my research interests and pursue the path to professorship. Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia became my new haven for researching Catholicism, technology, and worship in August 2025. My passion for religious studies has only been fueled in my graduate experiences, as has my desire to teach. Between working for Candler’s Office of Digital Learning, taking courses such as Church in the Digital Age, and developing my methodological and research skills, I believe attaining my Master’s in Theological Studies from Candler will propel me forward in my academic and professional journey.
In my free time from school and research, I enjoy cross stitching, people watching at coffee shops, exploring Atlanta with friends, and rewatching old musicals!