Seth Gaiters (2021) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion & Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Most recently, it was announced that Seth received a 2023 Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, as well as the Lily-funded Young Scholars in American Religion program grant (Religion & American Culture, IUPUI).
Seth has also received various fellowships, including Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Religion & Public Sphere Program: Religion Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellowship, (Henry Luce Foundation and the Fetzer Institute) (2022-23); University of Virginia’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab and the Memory Project Faculty Fellow (Henry Luce Foundation) (2022-23); Faculty Success Program, National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development (NCFDD) (2022); Social Science Research Council (SSRC): Religion and the Public Sphere Fellowship for Early-Career Scholars (Henry Luce Foundation) (2020-21); Louisville Institute Scholar, Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion (Lilly Endowment) (2021-23). Seth has not only been working to get grounded in his new career and increase research productivity but also to maintain a healthy work-life balance. He is actively working on attempting to maintain this equilibrium through the encouragement of the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development’s Faculty Success Program. Though this admission may seem incredibly personal to some, Seth feels much better about himself and his work through attempting to maintain such balance. In addition to this he is vigorously working on my first book manuscript, #BlackLivesMatter Revives the Role of the Sacred in the Public Sphere, which is being developed out of my dissertation. Seth's work in this area has afforded him many opportunities of presenting his research from this past year at the American Academy of Religion, the American Studies Association, the Modern Language Association, and at the Leuven Encounters in Systematic Theology XIII at KU Leuven, Belgium. Seth has also been teaching Introduction to Religious Studies and teaching/developing two new courses—"African American Religions" and "Race, Religion, & Social Justice."He is also working on a podcast with the University of Virginia’s Religion, Race & Democracy Lab, and the Memory Project. The podcast involves interviews of faith leaders from the Ferguson Uprising of 2014-15.
