Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst, PhD, is an associate professor of Religion and the associate director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. 

Her formal expertise is in Islam in South Asia, racialization of Muslims, and global histories of imperialism. Her first book, Indian Muslim Minorities & the 1857 Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad, is available through Bloomsbury. She is also co-editor of Words of Experience: Translating Islam with Carl W. Ernst (Equinox).

She’s an academic mama with a long last name who enjoys killing joy for great justice. And funsies.

Megan Goodwin, PhD, is nerd-in-chief at Feral Nerd Consulting, an editor for Religion Dispatches, and media/tech support for the Crossroads Project. 

She is an expert in issues of gender/sexuality, race, politics, and American religions. Her first book, Abusing Religion: Literary Persecutions, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions is available through Rutgers. (We talk about it on our religion & pop culture episode!)  

She’s a professional explainer of why you should care about religion, even if you’re not religious yourself. (Often she will keep explaining even after you have asked her to stop.)