Rev. Dr. Yara González-Justiniano is Assistant Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture with emphasis on Latinx Studies and affiliated faculty of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University. She is a practical theologian and minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). She received a PhD in Theological Studies with a concentration in Church and Society from Boston University School of Theology, where she also received her Master of Divinity. At the University of Puerto Rico, Dr. González-Justiniano earned a B.A. in Audiovisual Communications with a concentration on film; she also double majored in theater and modern languages. Her educational journey of interdisciplinarity informs the ways in which she approaches theological studies.
The overarching themes of her scholarship are grounded in questions that pertain to practices of social justice, liberation, community, macro psychological analysis, hope, and art. In her most recent book, Centering Hope as a Sustainable Decolonial Practice: Esperanza en Práctica (2022), she wrestles with answering the question of what hope looks like amid socioeconomic crisis. Her interdisciplinary approach to this inquiry grounds itself in ethnographic research in hopes of finding practices that enable a hope that can sustain the collective. Her second book, tentatively titled Exhausting All Possibilities: Healing in Place, will explore issues of place and displacement in colonized contexts.
