The Lamin Sanneh Research Grants are named in honor of the late Yale Professor Lamin Sanneh, pioneer in the study of World Christianity, OMSC trustee, and contributing editor to the IBMR. Each year OMSC@PTS awards two grants of $10,000 each, distributed across the two-year duration of the grant, in support of research proposals by Christian scholars from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Oceania. The research project should advance the field of World Christianity, Mission Studies, Intercultural Theology, and cognate disciplines.
Professor Sanneh had a passion for what he called “lived religion,” studies that provide insight into how Christian communities and persons understand and live out their faith in specific historical, cultural, social, and political contexts. Winning proposals will help to expand and nuance the global church’s knowledge of the world Christian movement.
Announcing OMSC@PTS’s LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANT (2025-2027) Awardees
Felicity Apaah is a Senior Lecturer in the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of Ghana. She specializes in African Christianity with a focus on Pentecostalism, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and their intersections with Christian theology and mission. Her current research brings indigenous epistemologies into dialogue with Gender Studies, examining religion, female chieftaincy, and the promotion of inclusive societies in Ghana. She has received research grants from the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, the Nagel Institute’s Engaging African Realities Project, and the Ife Institute of Advanced Studies, and she contributed to the Mega Churches Project at Canisius College, USA. Through her work, she seeks to amplify the voices of female traditional leaders and advance scholarship on religion and social transformation in Africa.
Research Project Title: Nana Kow Ackon V as a Site of Spiritual Contestation: Christianity, Indigenous Spirituality and Lifemaking
Victoria (Yun-Ching) Shen is a doctoral candidate in Historical Studies in Theology and Religion at Emory University, with a concentration in World Christianity. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, and a B.A. in International Studies and History from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Shen’s work focuses on East Asian Christians’ political activism since the 1950s, especially in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Her dissertation examines how overseas Taiwanese female Christians and North American Taiwanese female Christians participated in and contributed to the democratization of Taiwan, with particular attention to the role of transpacific migration and North American experience in shaping their activism. Moreover, she also discusses how gender and social norms were challenged or strengthened during the political activism. Her broader research and teaching interests explore World Christianity, Asian and Asian American religions, gender and religion, and contextual theologies in Asian and Asian American settings.
Research Project Title: Transpacific Taiwanese female Christians’ Political Activism from 1970 to 2000
Learn more about our awardees
2024-2026
Announcing OMSC@PTS’s LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANT (2024-2026) Awardees
OMSC@PTS is delighted to award Emmanuel Ojeifo and Dr. Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko our 2024-2026 Lamin Sanneh Research Grants ($10,000 each). Their projects contain great promise for expanding the horizons of mission studies, world Christianity, and intercultural theology, utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate theology, history, and social sciences to advance our understanding of the world Christian movement. Please join us in celebrating their work and scholarship!
Emmanuel Ojeifo is a fourth year PhD candidate in theology at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. His area of research is in African Christian political theology, with specific interests in land, agrarian, and ecological questions. His doctoral dissertation explores the politics of land ownership and belonging in sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of Christian theological social ethics. Emmanuel earned his MA in Religion in Global Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and his MSc in Science and Religion at New College, the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, as a Kirby Laing International Foundation Scholar 2018-19. He also holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Theology from Nigeria. Emmanuel is currently a Fellow of the Freedom and Prosperity Center of the US Atlantic Council, where he is researching the role of religious faith in the advancement of democratic freedom and prosperity in Africa. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of The Kukah Center, a research and policy think-tank in Nigeria, as well as Researcher at Bethany Land Institute, a residential ecological training institute in Uganda.
Research Project Title: African Christians and Ecological Renewal in African Rural Communities: Reinventing the Margins in Africa as the Locus of World Christianity
Dr. Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko is a senior researcher at the Department of Religious Studies of the H.S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv), PhD, and a Senior Researcher Fellow at Sankt Ignatios College, Stockholm, Sweden. She is a well-known researcher of religion, interfaith relations in Ukraine, an expert in the field of multicultural dialogue, national and religious identities in the context of social dialogue, humanistic values of civil society, and the relationship between spirituality and religion.
Dr. Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko has been repeatedly elected Scientific Secretary of the Ukrainian Association of Researchers of Religion (UARR) – from 2009 to the present, she is a member of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) and the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). As the Scientific Secretary of the UARR, she has extensive experience in the field of church-state relations. She has more than 90 personal scientific publications in professional journals, collective monographs in Ukraine and abroad, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, including: “Christianity of the Postmodern Age” (Kyiv, 2005); “Religious Ukraine” (Kyiv, 2008); “Questions of Religion and Religious Studies: Religious Studies of Ukraine in the late XX – early XXI century” (Moscow, 2010); “Religious Security / Danger of Ukraine” Kyiv, 2019, others: orcid.org/0000-0001-6371-9213
Dr. Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko defended her PhD thesis on “Syncretism of pre-Christian beliefs and Orthodoxy in Ukraine” (2001). She completed her doctoral studies at the H.S. Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (“Contextuality of Orthodox Religiosity: Theological Visions and Religious Analysis”). In 2011, the author’s monograph “Religion in its social and personal functionality” was published. In 2020, the scientific monograph “The Phenomenon of Individual Religiosity of the Orthodox Believer” was published. Dr. Hanna Kulahina-Stadnichenko has participated in more than 80 scientific conferences in Ukraine and abroad, was a lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at leading universities in Ukraine.
You can visit the author’s YouTube channel and scientific blog of Dr. Hanna Kulahinа-Stadnichenko.
Research Project Title: Ecumenical Initiatives of Ukrainian Churches in the Challenges of Current Social Crises and War
2023-2025
Announcing OMSC@PTS’s LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANT (2023-2025) Awardees
OMSC@PTS is delighted to award Stephen Kapinde and Younghwa Kim our 2023-2025 Lamin Sanneh Research Grants ($10,000 each). Their projects contain great promise for expanding the horizons of mission studies, world Christianity, and intercultural theology, utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate theology, history, and social sciences to advance our understanding of the world Christian movement. Please join us in celebrating their work and scholarship!
Stephen Kapinde is a Lecturer in Religion and Public Life at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Pwani University, Kenya. He is also an adjunct Associate Lecturer, Religion and Global Politics, University of London Worldwide, UK. Dr. Kapinde holds a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a Master of Arts in Religion and Public Life from Pwani University in Kenya. Recently, he completed his Postdoctoral Monograph Fellowship at Polin Institute, Abo Akademi in Finland. Dr. Kapinde conducts interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on religion and politics, peacebuilding, reconciliation, transitional justice, gender and citizenship, and inter-religious dialogue. He is also an expert consultant on issues related to Religion and counter-violent extremism in the Horn of Africa.
Research Project Title: “Towards a Dialogical Theology”: An Integrated and Multidimensional Inter-faith Approach to Counter-Violent Extremism and Peacebuilding in Kenya
Younghwa Kim is a doctoral candidate in World Christianity at Emory University. He holds a S.T.M. in World Christianity from Yale Divinity School, a M.Div. from Boston University School of Theology, and a B.A. in Theology from Methodist Theological University in Seoul, Korea. Younghwa’s dissertation examines the lives, practices, and theologies of Korean Christian women in Korea and later as missionaries in Pakistan by focusing on the tensions, negotiations, and exchanges emerging from the interactions of Korean women with transnational and Korean social and religious contexts. His broader research and teaching interests include World Christianity, mission history, Asian Christianity, Asian religions, and inter-religious dialogue.
Research Project Title: Transnational Encounters and Korean Christian Women in Pakistan, 1916-1974
2022-2024
Announcing OMSC@PTS’s LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANT (2022-2024) Awardees
OMSC@PTS is delighted to award Francis Benyah and Fides del Castillo our 2022-2024 Lamin Sanneh Research Grants ($10,000 each). Their projects contain great promise for expanding the horizons of mission studies, world Christianity, and intercultural theology, utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate theology, history, and social sciences to advance our understanding of the world Christian movement. Please join us in celebrating their work and scholarship!
Francis Benyah is a doctoral student at the Department for the Study of Religions, Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland. In addition to his doctoral research, Benyah also teaches in Åbo Akademi’s international masters programme in social exclusion. He has also served as a PhD guest researcher at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen. His research interest focuses on African Pentecostal Christianity with a special interest in how it intersects and interact with public life in areas such as media, politics, health, and human rights.
Research Project Title: Mapping Cosmologies of Mental Health: A Study on Pentecostal Prayer Camps and Indigenous Knowledge of Healing in Ghana
Fides del Castillo holds a doctorate in Religious and Values Education from De La Salle University-Manila and a certificate in Adult Faith Formation from Fordham University, New York. Currently, she is the Associate Dean of De La Salle University – Laguna Campus. Fides is also President of the Network of Professional Researchers and Educators and Consultant to the CBCP Basic Ecclesial Communities. She is a member of the International Association for Mission Studies, Ecclesia of Women in Asia, Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the American Academy of Religion. Her latest edited book is Flourishing Faith: 500 Years of Christianity in the Philippines. Her research interests are Christian mission, empirical theology, lived religion, and spirituality.
Research Project Title: Laylayan Theology: Lived Religion of Christian Migrant Workers in Asia
2021-2023
Announcing OMSC@PTS’s inaugural LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANT (2021-23) AwardeeS
OMSC@PTS is delighted to award Davi C. Ribeiro Lin and Tala Raheb our inaugural Lamin Sanneh Research Grants ($10,000 each). Their projects contain great promise for expanding the horizons of mission studies, world Christianity, and intercultural theology, utilizing multi-disciplinary approaches that integrate theology, history, and social sciences to advance our understanding of the world Christian movement. Please join us in celebrating their work and scholarship!
Davi C. Ribeiro Lin is a professor at Seminário Teológico Servo de Cristo, teaching on the intersection of spiritual theology, counseling psychology, and the therapeutic ideas of Augustine of Hippo. He is a licensed psychologist in Brazil and an evangelical pastor at Comunidade Evangelical do Castelo. Davi holds a joint doctorate in theology from KU Leuven, Belgium and Faculdade Jesuíta, Brazil.
Research Project Title: Theography as Cura Animarum: Augustine’s Confessions as Narrative Meaning Making for Mental Health
Tala Raheb is a doctoral candidate in West and South Asian Religions (WSAR) at Emory University. In addition to her work in WSAR, Tala is pursuing a concentration in World Christianity. Her dissertation examines how Palestinian Americans interact with Christian Zionism at the intersection of American religion and politics. Tala received her BA from St. Olaf College, and her MTS from Candler School of Theology.
Research Project Title: “Singing Allah’s song in a Foreign Land”: Palestinians and Christian Zionism in America
APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2025-2027 LAMIN SANNEH RESEARCH GRANTS ARE NOW CLOSED
Submission Deadline: June 30, 2025
Time frame of Award: September 2025 – August, 2027
Amount: Two grants of $10,000 each
If you are serving as a reference for an applicant, you may still submit your letter of recommendation via this link:
Every year, the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary (OMSC@PTS) invites proposals for two two-year “Lamin Sanneh Research Grants.” Proposals are welcome from those working in Mission Studies, broadly conceived, World Christianity, Intercultural Theology or a cognate field. We welcome interdisciplinary proposals that feature empirical research as well as theological reflection. Proposals may draw on literature in theology (Biblical Studies, Christian History, Systematic or Dogmatic Theology, or Practical Theology), social sciences (Anthropology, Archaeology, Economics, Geography, Politics, Psychology, or Sociology), or the humanities (Art, Ancient and Modern Languages, History, Law, Literature, Philosophy, or Religious Studies).
Grant funds must be used for research initiatives, including the costs for field work, library research, writing and submitting work for presentation and publication, and associated travel. Funds should not be used for tuition or everyday living expenses.
During the two-year grant term (September 1, 2025–August 31, 2027), part of the grant should be reserved for travel to one international academic conference where you will present the results of your Sanneh Research Grant. Those awarded a grant will need to complete a short mid-grant report after the first year and a final report after the second year. In addition, grant winners are expected to write a short public-facing essay about their research for The Occasional, OMSC’s blog.
The selection committee for the 2025-27 awards includes Dr. Soojin Chung, Dr. Joao Chaves, Dr. Kyama Mugambi, and Dr. Damaris Parasitau, and Dr. Easten Law.
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