Dr. Linn Tonstad Joins Perkins Faculty

Dr. Linn Tonstad joins the Perkins faculty as assistant professor of Christian Theology, effective August 1, 2011. “Our time with Dr. Tonstad during the interview process,” said Dean William B. Lawrence, “including her public visit, clearly demonstrated that she will contribute wonderfully to the academic and ecclesiastical dimensions of our mission as a school of the church and of the university."

Tonstad comes to Perkins from Valparaiso University in Indiana, where she has been Lilly Fellow in the Humanities and Theology since August 2009. Her teaching interests include systematic theology, philosophy of religion, and theological method. She will begin teaching in the Master’s degree programs at Perkins in the fall term of 2011 and also will be a member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University.

Tonstad earned her B.A. (Religious Studies/Philosophical Studies), cum laude from La Sierra University, Riverside, California, in 2001, where she was honored for her Outstanding Undergraduate Research Paper and was named the School of Religion’s Outstanding Graduate. She earned her M.A.R. (Philosophy of Religion), summa cum laude from Yale Divinity School in 2003, where she received the Tew Prize in 2002. She subsequently received an A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellowship from the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she was awarded the 2008-2009 Robert M. Leylan Prize Dissertation Fellowship for her dissertation, Trinity, hierarchy, and difference: Mapping the Christian imaginary. She received the Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Yale with distinction, in May 2009.

Tonstad is a member of the American Academy of Religion. Besides her primary academic competence in systematic theology, she will bring additional skills to enrich the University. She is fluent in Norwegian and German, speaks French, and has some fluency in Arabic.