Steering Committee

Michelle is a historian at the Church History Department, focusing on global history and women’s history. She has a PhD in History & Civilisation from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her key research interest lies in cultural identity and community among migrant groups, women’s religious history, and transnational history. Her recent research has focused on Danish Latter-day Saint women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. 

Chiung Hwang Chen is a professor of Communication, Media, and Culture at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. Her research interests encompass media-related religion, gender, and race issues; journalism systems in Taiwan and China; and cultural studies in the United States, the Pacific, and Chinese-speaking regions.

Her recent scholarly endeavors include co-editing a two-volume book Religion Online: How Digital Technology is Changing the Way We Worship and Pray (Praeger) and authoring various articles and book chapters such as “Intersectionality” in Handbook on Mormonism and Gender; “Deficient Progression: Charting Diversity in Major Media and Religion Journals” in Journal of Media and Religion; and “Incipient Diversity: Gender and Race in Media and Religion Research” in The Handbook of Religion and Communication. With colleagues in Korea and Israel, she has recently begun the process of a book project on sacred places and media. 

Daniel Hernandez publishes under their pen name, Arcia Tecun, which is after their grandmothers. Tecun is Wīnak (Maya) and has a diverse ancestry primarily from Iximulew (Guatemala). They grew up in Rose Park on the west side of Soonkahni (Salt Lake Valley) in the Newe (Shoshone, Goshute) and Nuuchiu (Ute) territories.

Tecun holds a PhD in anthropology from Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland) where they have lived and worked in the territories of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and Ngāti Pāoa in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland, New Zealand). Tecun is currently an assistant professor of anthropology at Utah Valley University located in the territory of the Timpanogos people. Their primary research interests are based in global Indigenous issues, theory, and methods with a regional experience in the Americas and Oceania. Tecun’s contributions to Global Mormon Studies scholarship is centred on critical discourse and theory and its application to the “Lamanite”. 

Caroline Kline is Research Assistant Professor and the Assistant Director of the Center for Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. She holds a PhD in religion from CGU, and her areas of interest include contemporary Latter-day Saint women’s communities, feminist theory, and oral history. Her book, Mormon Women at the Crossroads: Global Narratives and the Power of Connectedness (2022), explores Latter-day Saint women’s lived experiences in Botswana, Mexico, and the United States.