Dana L. Robert
· William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, Director of the Center for Global Christianity and MissionVerifiedBoston University · School of Theology
Active 1970–2025
About
Dana L. Robert is the William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University School of Theology. Her research and teaching interests encompass mission history, World Christianity, and mission theology. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Missiology in 2017. Dr. Robert has authored numerous books, including Faithful Friendships: Embracing Diversity in Christian Community, African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives, and Challenges, and Joy to the World!: Mission in the Age of Global Christianity. She has also contributed to various edited volumes and articles on mission studies and global Christianity. As an editor of the journal Church History and a member of the editorial committees for projects like the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, her work significantly influences the field of mission history and World Christianity. She has led important initiatives such as the North American regional mission study for the World Council of Churches and is actively involved in African Studies. Dr. Robert holds a BA from Louisiana State University and advanced degrees (MA, MPhil, PhD) from Yale University.
Research topics
- History
- Computer Science
- Geography
- Sociology
- Environmental science
- Engineering
- Archaeology
- Thermodynamics
- Pedagogy
- Cartography
- Mechanical engineering
- Religious studies
- Philosophy
- Meteorology
- Mathematics
- Environmental ethics
- Physics
Selected publications
Protestant State Theologians of Fellowship: from Christendom to Ecumenism in Postwar Europe
2025-03-01 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingProfessor Bonnie Sue Lewis: Teacher, Scholar, and Missionary. ASM Lifetime Achievement Award 2025
Missiology An International Review · 2025-10-17
article1st authorCorrespondingIntroduction to Professor Bonnie Sue Lewis, upon her reception of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Missiology.
Introduction: the Young Ecumenical Movement – Explorations in Christian Internationalism, 1895–1928
2025-03-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingMigrant Methodism: The Pastors of Harbin, Manchuria, and Memories of a Russian Methodist Movement
Wesley and Methodist Studies · 2025-06-01
article1st authorCorrespondingABSTRACT Based on interviews, rare documents, and personal reflections of the author, this article explores the founding, the outreach, and the dissolution of Russian Methodism in Harbin, Manchuria. American missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, began ministry among Russian speakers in Vladivostok. Fleeing from the Bolshevik revolution, they migrated with refugees to Harbin, Manchuria. Together the missionaries and Russian-speaking pastors founded churches and launched social services. By tracing the ministries of the refugee pastors from 1920s Harbin to their final destinations in Europe, North America, and elsewhere, the article illumines the nature of early twentieth-century Eurasian Methodism as a transnational diaspora movement.
Obituary for Marthinus “Inus” Louis Daneel (August 24, 1936–July 29, 2024)
Mission Studies · 2024-12-12
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingInternational Bulletin of Mission Research · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingThis article introduces the scholarship and administrative accomplishments of Dr. Gerald H. Anderson, longtime Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center and Editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Based on his missionary experience in the Philippines, his voluminous writings, and his founding of major missiological organizations, Anderson was central to the reframing of mission studies in the postcolonial era of the last third of the twentieth century. Under his leadership, the Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) became a hub for the emerging network of World Christianity scholarship. Unlike the rigidity of academic institutions caught in the discourse of secularization theory, the OMSC represented a creative liminal space with the flexibility to innovate. Anderson and the OMSC incubated teams of scholars and practitioners who cumulatively formulated a new approach to the study of mission and to the understanding of Christianity as a worldwide rather than Western religion.
Nationalism and Internationalism in the Young Ecumenical Movement, 1895-1920s
2024-07-31 · 2 citations
bookSenior authorOn Social Anthropologists and Missionary Ethnographers
OKH Journal Anthropological Ethnography and Analysis Through the Eyes of Christian Faith · 2024-07-25
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingExchange · 2024-05-14
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract This article applies selected aspects of Depesh Chakrabarty’s concept of “Provincializing Europe” to the discourse of world Christianity studies. It argues that colonial-era mission scholars constructed a grand narrative of a united Christian Europe to justify European missions to the rest of the world. Contemporary postcolonial efforts to de-center Europe now contrast a vitiated European Christianity with a vibrant nonwestern Christianity that is required to re-evangelize Europe. Paradoxically, the trope of a formerly Christian Europe merges with a caricature of its numerical failure to make European Christianity the permanent foil for world Christianity studies. The article urges that European Christianity be studied in its diverse contexts, that the distinction between migrant and missionary be queried, and that European Christianity be considered essential to world Christianity studies.
The Dutch Reformed Women's Missionary Movement from the Cape and the Mt. Holyoke Connection
Luviri Press eBooks · 2023-09-17 · 1 citations
book1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 737 shared
Adam Albright
Kinokuniya
- 737 shared
Janet Dean
Sussex County Community College
- 737 shared
Ladd Edinburgh
University of Newcastle Australia
- 737 shared
Caroline Heycock
- 737 shared
Louise McNally
Pompeu Fabra University
- 737 shared
Robert D. Borsley
Bangor University
- 711 shared
Amanda Porterfield
- 711 shared
Hugh McLeod
University of Bristol
Awards & honors
- Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Miss…
- Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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