At Boston College, Erik Owens is Director of the International Studies Program, Professor of the Practice in Theology in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, and affiliate faculty in the Formative Education Department of the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. He also serves as Director of the Program on Global Ethics and Social Trust, an international project based at Boston College that brings faculty together across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to address the ethical dimensions of urgent global issues and the implications for our academic, political, and religious communities.
Bridging the fields of religious ethics, political philosophy, and education, Owens’ research explores a variety of intersections between religion and public life, with particular attention to issues of citizenship in global contexts and the challenge of fostering the common good in religiously diverse societies.
He is the co-editor of three books: Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape; Religion and the Death Penalty: A Call for Reckoning; and The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics, the last of which was called a "must read" by the journal Foreign Affairs. He has also published a number of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles, as well as essays for the general public.
Owens teaches interdisciplinary courses on ethics and religion in international politics; religion in American public life (including religion in public schools); global citizenship; and political theologies of citizenship. He has also taught BC courses abroad in South Africa (Religion, Justice and Reconciliation) and Croatia (Political and Theological Dimensions of Sovereignty; Ethics, Religion and International Affairs).
At the American Academy of Religion (AAR), Owens served on the Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion from 2013 to 2019, and was twice appointed its chair from 2017 to 2019. In that capacity he founded the AAR's Public Scholars Project in partnership with the Religious Freedom Center and other academic centers and non-partisan institutions. He has also served on the steering committee and as co-chair of the AAR's Religion and Politics section and its "Religion and Public Schools: International Perspectives" program unit.
He received his Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Chicago, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a B.A. from Duke University.
[Students can book an appointment with Prof. Owens here.]
