Dr. Héctor M. Varela Rios (él/he) is Assistant Professor of Theology and Raquel and Alfonso Martínez-Fonts Endowed Assistant Professor in Latin American Studies at Villanova University (Pennsylvania, USA). He also serves as PhD Director for Admissions at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Prof. Varela Rios researches the interaction between Latine theology and material culture. He has published on sancocho and theological anthropology, the word ‘Latine’ as theological micro-intervention, devotional objects and typology of belief, decolonizing Oller’s El Velorio, a Methodist FBOs and its decolonial social holiness, and unknowing as a co-salutary intersection between theology and AI tools, and has two pieces in-press: on play and theology and on a ChatGPT-informed theology of devotion. Apart from two other articles, his next research, on La Virgen del Carmen and her international processional flow, is under review as part of an inductive theology volume from Brill. His first book, tentatively called Devotedness: object-centered lived Mariography, is currently under review by Fordham University Press. Prof. Varela Rios is proudly Boricua, dreams of his island’s well-being and independence, and loves spending time with his family, including three grandcats and one granddog.