Events & Programs

Faith and Healthcare Conference on Religion, End-of-life Care and Grief           

Thu, February 19th & Friday, February 20th, 2026  

Bass Conference Center 

WOMEN AND WORSHIP: 

Religion, Culture, Politics & Human Rights 

John F. Weatherly and Oxford Consortium for Human Rights Symposium 

April 11th-12th, 2026 Texas Christian University 

 

Who May Apply: 

1. Scholars/faculty (all ranks) 

1. Graduate students 

1. Advanced undergraduate students 

1. Submission Guidelines 

1. Abstract length: ~150 words 

1. Include: paper title and presenter email (you may also add 

1. name, affiliation, and 3–5 keywords) 

1. Format: single paragraph, clear statement of argument, 

1. methods, sources, and contribution 

1. Send submissions to: Antoinette DeNapoli & Lisa Battaglia at wrhrcollective@gmail.com 

1. Submission deadline: Friday, December 5th 

 

• Presentation format: 15–20 minute papers 

1. Panels: Traditional panels, roundtables, and other innovative formats are welcome (panel proposals should include a 150-word panel rationale plus individual abstracts). 

1. Accessibility & Inclusion: We encourage submissions from scholars of all backgrounds and will provide accessible session formats. 

1. Review criteria: clarity of thesis, originality, methodological rigor, and fit with the conference theme. 

  

Important Dates 

1. Submission deadline: Friday, December 5th 

1. Notification of acceptance: Monday, January 5th 

1. Conference dates: Saturday, April 11th & Sunday, April 12th, 2026 

  

Registration information 

• Registration fee: $75 

• The conference will take place at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas 

  

This event is organized by the Women, Religion and Human Rights Collective (hereafter WRHRC) comprised of scholars Dr. Antoinette DeNapoli (Texas Christian University), Dr. Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox (Quinnipiac University), Dr. Lisa Battaglia (Samford University), and Dr. Cindy Dawson (University of Houston). 

The goal of the WRHRC is to foster compassionate and critical dialogue around religion, rights, and women’s and marginalized identities from interdisciplinary and community perspectives. As a collective, our mission is innovative because we are concerned not only with the nature and function of representations of women and other historically marginalized identities in academic, civil, legal, religious, and political discourse, particularly their ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘when,’ ‘why,’ and ‘how.’ We are also concerned with the critical role of religion and human rights in the production, use, and sanctioning of such representations to achieve specific outcomes. 

Our inaugural symposium in April 2024 hosted twenty-seven speakers (and many other participants) and featured riveting panels and presentations on the theme of ‘Women, Religion, and Human Rights.’ As in 2024, this year’s collaborative effort between the WRHRC, TCU’s John F. Weatherly Professorship, and the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights (OCHR), seeks to bring together a cadre of outstanding community activists, religious and community leaders, graduate and undergraduate students, and teacher-scholars from Texas and elsewhere. 

womenreligionhumanrights.org (Under Construction) 

 

Religion Department and The Oxford Consortium for Human Rights 

Human Rights and New Technology 

July 5-11, 2026 

Magdalen College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK 

This conference will explore the relationship between many new technologies emerging across human society and people's continuous demands for human rights. The course will examine how the impact of new technology is sometimes positive and enabling of human rights, sometimes negative and restrictive, and often ambivalent and uncertain. Students will study particular technological revolutions in communications, medicine, governance, surveillance, education, weapons, energy, and manufacturing to explore their implications for traditional human rights to health, privacy, free speech, free association, and the laws of war. More profoundly, the conference will explore how new technology is changing our experience of being human - ontology itself - as we live an increasingly hybrid life as computerized humanity. 

Program Costs 

• Students - $2,450 (includes tuition, housing & most meals) 

• Airfare is separate (usually costs range from $900-$1,200) 

 

Applications for the program will be available in March, and decisions will be announced in early May. 

 

Scholarships are available to cover a portion of the costs. 

 

Interested students should direct all inquiries to Dr. DeNapoli, Department Chair: a.denapoli@tcu.edu.  

 

The Daryl D. Schmidt Lectureship on Religion in Public Life

The Daryl D. Schmidt Lectureship on Religion in Public Life commemorates the life and work of a longtime TCU religion professor and New Testament scholar who believed that scholars should and can make a difference in society.

 

In 2025, the TCU Religion Department hosted the Daryl D. Schmidt Lectureship on Religion in Public Life, with guest speaker Dr. Kate Bowler, Professor of American Religious History at Duke University, delivering a lecture titled “The Gospel of Self-Help.”

 

Kate Bowler, Ph.D.

Dr. Bowler is a four-time New York Times bestselling author, including her book Everything Happens For A Reason (and Other Lies I've Loved). She is an award-winning podcast host, has two honorary doctorates, an award from Yale University for service to theological education, and seven books to her credit. 

 

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In 2023, the TCU Religion Department hosted the Daryl D. Schmidt Lectureship on Religion in Public Life, with guest speaker  Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Robert George. Dr. West is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. Dr. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence ar Princeton University, the director of Princeton's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (including Harvard Law School, and Pepperdine University) and is a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. The two distinguished professors delivered a lecture titled "The Truth-Seeking Mission of the University." 

 

Cornel West, Ph.D.

Dr. Cornel West, affectionately known to many as Brother West, is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary. Dr. West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects -- including but by no means limited to, the classics, philosophy, politics, cultural theory, literature, and music. He has a passion to communicate to a vast variety of publics in order to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. – a legacy of telling the truth and bearing witness to love and justice.

Robert P. George, Ph.D.

Dr. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. The author of many books and articles, Dr. George specializes in the areas of the philosophy of law, constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, moral and political philosophy, bioethics and law and religion. A widely respected thinker, he holds twenty-two honorary doctorates. Dr. George is committed to honest conversations about the Life Questions in the unflinching pursuit of truth.