Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

Ruth Chojnacki teaches with the Instituto de Liderazgo Pastoral, the Spanish-speaking diaconate program of the Archdiocese of Chicago and with Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies at DePaul University. Her book, Indigenous Apostles: Maya Catholic Catechists Working the World in Highland Chiapas (Rodopi, 2010), draws from field work in the Diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, where she also collaborated with the diocesan human rights center. She is a founder of the National Security Archives housed at George Washington University and holds a Ph.D. in History of Religion from the University of Chicago where she was a student of Jonathan Z. Smith.

Jennifer Scheper Hughes is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside where she is founding co-director of the Institute for the Study of Immigration and Religion. She writes and teaches on the subject of Latin American religions, indigenous Christianity, material religion, and the history of Liberation Theology. Her book, Biography of a Mexican Crucifix: Lived Religion and Local faith from the Conquest to the Present was published in 2010 (Oxford University press). She is currently completing a three year research project on the history of the Second Vatican Council in Mexico.