
Student Interreligious Leadership & Research Programs
The Jay Phillips Center is dedicated to advancing Interreligious Studies (IRS) and fostering Interfaith Engagement (IFE) by providing students with opportunities to grow as scholars, engage with religious diversity on campus and in the community, and develop the skills to be leaders in various civic, professional, and community contexts. The Interreligious Research Grants and Interfaith Fellows Engaging Religious Diversity Certification Program are two such opportunities, among others.
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Jay Phillips Center
Student Leadership & Research Programs
The Jay Phillips Center offers two robust programs for students to study interreligious relations & engage with religious diversity while building their skillset to lead in a religiously diverse world.


Interreligious Research Grants
100-hour paid research grant to investigate interreligious relations and encounters
Interreligious Research Grants (2020-2021)
Key Personnel:
Dr. Hans Gustafson, IRF Cohort Coordinator, Director of the Jay Phillips Center and Adj. Professor in Theology, College of Arts & Sciences, hsgustafson@stthomas.edu
Laura Bru, Program Manager, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Center for Student Achievement, laura.bru@stthomas.edu
Kailey Corder
Listening to Love: An Inquiry into Interreligious Racial Justice Work Occurring within the Twin Cities
Majors: Psychology and Justice and Peace Studies, Minors: Family Studies and Interfaith Leadership
Project: Utilizing storytelling as a powerful tool for social change, this projects strives to listen to the stories of various religious leaders working towards racial justice within the Twin Cities and document the collective narrative of the city. Mentor: Michael Klein (Justice & Society Studies)

Laila Sheikh
The Coronavirus Pandemic and Religious Engagement: Mapping Interfaith Leadership in the Cedar-Riverside Neighborhood
Project: Utilizing GIS mapping software and ArcGIS Digital Story Maps to examine interreligious encounter and interfaith leadership in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis, this project focuses on the ways the Coronavirus pandemic has impacted (inter)religious engagement and how religious leaders and interfaith student leaders have adapted their practices. Mentor: Paul Lorah (Earth, Environment, and Society)

Dominique Stewart
"Ye krik? Ye krak!" A Narration of Caribbean Identity through Interreligious Stories
Project:This research examines Caribbean identity through interreligious encounters in West Indian francophone literature. I will be looking at how preservation of these encounters in oral and written narratives help us to understand what it means to be Caribbean. Mentor: Stephanie Lohse (Modern and Classical Languages)
Interreligious Research Grants (2019-2020)
Key Personnel:
Dr. Hans Gustafson, IRF Cohort Coordinator, Director of the Jay Phillips Center and Adj. Professor in Theology, College of Arts & Sciences, hsgustafson@stthomas.edu
Laura Bru, Program Manager, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Center for Student Achievement, laura.bru@stthomas.edu
Grant Pederson
Influence of Muslim Philosophers on Duns Scotus' Christian Philosophy of God
Majors: Philosophy and Classical Languages, Minors: Theology
Project: This project examines the influence of Muslim philosophers Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on the Scholastic Christian thinker John Duns Scotus, with a special focus on his philosophy of classical divine attributes. Mentor: Gloria Frost (Philosophy)

Rabia Sheikh
Editing for the Abrahamic God: An Ethical and Religious Case for using CRISPR at the Embryonic Stage
Majors: Biology, Minors: Chemistry
Project: This project investigates how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers and scientists utilize their tradition’s sacred texts in determining ethical approaches and responsibilities for the use of gene editing tools such as CRISPR on adults, children, and embryos. Mentor: Kerri Carlson (Biology) and Paul Wojda (Theology)

Dominique Stewart
A Religious Rendezvous: The Encounter of Jamaican Hindus and Early Rastafari
Majors: Actuarial Science, French, Minors: Interreligious Studies and Comparative Theology
Project: This project explores the contact and exchange of the long-standing Hindu community in Jamaica with the early Rastafari movement and how its spiritualities contributed to the historical formation, and contemporary actualization, of the Rastafari concept of IyanI (“I and I”). Mentor: Ted Ulrich (Theology). Dissemination: paper presented at Regional American Academy of Religion Virtual Conference (4 Apr 2020).