The Project on Lived Theology is delighted to introduce our 2014 summer interns and their internship projects:

Claire Constance is a second year in the College of Arts and Sciences planning on studying global public health and anthropology. She is a member of the student advisory board for the Center for Global Health and works for student affairs community engagement. She is spending this upcoming summer in Limpopo, South Africa with an interdisciplinary team of graduate and undergraduate students to train community health workers in child development assessment and intervention. Claire is very interested in the intersections between religious conviction, health, education, and empowerment and is looking forward to exploring these themes while she and her team live and learn with the people of Limpopo.

Peter Hartwig is a Charlottesville native and the son of a local minister. It was not until he entered high school that he discovered a passion for theology, and it has been all downhill from there. Peter is majoring in religious studies and classics, and the academic study of theology has only intensified his love for religious thought. He is particularly interested—at least for the time being—in the history and promise of the Pentecostal movement, dogmatics, and the New Perspective. Outside of schoolwork, Peter fishes, tries to write creatively, and sings a cappella.

For the summer, Peter and his mentor, graduate student Nathan Walton, will be teaching a ten-week course in American religious autobiography at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Their students will both read and write religious autobiographies. They hope that their project will foster a mutually beneficial discussion about autobiography as theological reflection.

Nathan Walton is a second-year Ph.D. student in theology, ethics, and culture in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is from Brodnax, a small town in southern Virginia, and holds a B.A. in religious studies from U.Va. and a master of divinity degree from Duke Divinity School. His current research focuses on the prosperity gospel movement, and he is primarily interested in how prosperity theology intersects with theological anthropology, Christology, and social reform. Nathan is also volunteer staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Ultimately, Nathan plans to continue teaching in academic as well as church settings. Nathan is serving as a mentor for the internship program this summer.

Watch the intern blog all summer long to read Claire and Peter’s reflections on their work. Learn more about the internship program here.