University of Virginia

Graduate Student, Religious Studies

Graduate Research Assistant, The Project on Lived Theology

About

Kelly West Figueroa-Ray, 33, is a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia in the Religious Studies Department; her degree program is Comparative Scripture, Interpretation, and Practice. She is focusing on the relationship between scripture and theology as it is lived out in communities of faith with a particular interest in multicultural Christian ministries. She works as a Graduate Research Assistant with The Project on Lived Theology (www.livedtheology.org), managing the project to develop a digital archive that will make Dr. Charles Marsh’s research on the Civil Rights Movement accessible to researchers and the general public. She is a participant in the Graduate Scriptural Reasoning (SR) group at U.Va. (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/journals/abraham/sjsr/sjsrwhat.html), a Contributing Scholar on The State of Formation (http://www.stateofformation.org/author/kelly-figueroa-ray/), and a Columnist for Huffington Post Religion (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-figueroaray). She earned a BA in Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999 and graduated magna cum laude from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. earning a M.Div. in 2004.