Kate Lassiter

Dr. Lassiter comes to Meadville Lombard with extensive experience in the academy, non-profit development and management, and diverse religious communities. “Over the years, I’ve wanted to understand how structural violence shapes our ability to imagine and enact different worlds—and I’ve always needed to learn in practical and contextual ways.” As such, Dr. Lassiter has immersed herself in various issues over the years, including work in disability rights, criminal justice reform, and sustainable agriculture, and brought on-the-ground training into her teaching and research. She has broad expertise in the role of religious practices in public strategies for healing and justice, theories of recognition, and feminist and queer theology. In her book Recognizing Other Subjects: Feminist Pastoral Theology and the Challenge of Identity, Dr. Lassiter identifies interpersonal, structural, and theological barriers to advancing care and justice, and identifies strategies for personal and social transformation. 
 
Prior to joining Meadville Lombard, she served as Visiting Instructor for the M.A. in Social Justice and Community Development at Loyola University Chicago, Associate (and Assistant) Professor of Religious and Pastoral Studies at Mount St. Joseph University, and Director of Theological Field Education at Chicago Theological Seminary. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion, Psychology, and Culture from Vanderbilt University where she was a fellow in the Program for Theology and Practice. She is also a yoga and meditation instructor and an avid outdoorswoman.

“What better place can there be than a seminary which sees the intertwining of justice and healing as critical to the spiritual and material transformation of self, community, and world? What better time than now? I am elated to join Meadville Lombard Theological School as Senior Director of Lifelong Learning and to launch what is tentatively called the Institute for Justice, Healing, and Liberation."