Siobhan Kelly

Siobhan Kelly is a PhD Candidate (ABD) at Harvard University in Religion with a secondary field in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Their scholarship, published in Theology & Sexuality and Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, examines the development of contemporary understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality, specifically attending to the constitution of the field of trans studies. Siobhan draws from psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and feminist, queer, and gender theory in their dissertation project, tentatively titled “Public Parts: Psychoanalysis, the Study of Religion, and Trans Subjectivity.” In this project, they hope to explore how understandings of belief, desire, and biology operate in popular discourse by and about trans people, in trans studies, and in the study of religion. They hope to show what trans studies can learn from the study of religion, and what the study of religion can learn from trans studies. Siobhan received a BA in Religion from Tufts University in 2015 and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School in 2017.