Nicole Turner

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Nicole Turner joins Yale University’s Department of Religious Studies as an Assistant Professor in January 2020. Her work focuses on the intersections between black religious and political life in the nineteenth-century United States with a focus on the constructions of race and gender, and she also uses mapping to explore core themes of space, place, movement and belonging in African American religious and political life. Her first book, Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Post-Emancipation Virginia, narrates the transformation in black religious political strategies that occurred from 1865 to 1890 and uses election data, church and convention minutes, and archival collections to depict the forces that transformed black religious institutions from examples of black political acumen to sites of political organizing. She earned her Ph.D. in History with certificates in Africana Studies and College Level Teaching from the University of Pennsylvania, M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary, and B.A. from Haverford College.