Associate Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center

Ruth V. Amwe is Associate Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center and previously served as a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York City. She completed her Master of Arts in Theological Studies with a certificate in Black Church Studies and PhD in Religion and Society from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Amwe’s research has centered on Africa and the Black diaspora, and at the intersection of world Christianity, religion, gender, and society. She has published several articles, book chapters, and is currently working on two book projects currently entitled “Paradox of Colonization: (Re)Imagining Gender, Religion, and Political Identities in Liberia” and “Naked Assertion and Aggressive Believing: Negotiating Gender, Religion, and Public Discourse in West Africa.” Amwe is also co-editor of Women and Gender in World Christianity: Reimagining Agency, Power, and Lived Experiences (Bloomsbury Academic, 2027), which brings together a selection of papers presented at the 5th World Christianity Conference held at the University of Ghana, Legon under the theme “Revisiting Women and Gender in World Christianity.” She has also organized major international academic conferences and worked on several grant-funded projects, exceeding $3 million.

Amwe is a research associate at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and postdoctoral fellow at Ife Institute of Advanced Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. She is an invited reviewer for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and the International Bulletin of Mission Research and is also the deputy managing editor of Utambuzi: Journal for the Study of the Religions of Africa and its Diaspora.

Amwe serves as the North American representative of the International Sociological Association’s Research Council on the Sociology of Religion, as a steering committee member in the African Religions Unit for the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and as a member of AAR’s Status of Women and Gender Minoritized Persons in the Profession Committee.