Sunder John Boopalan, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg, Canada. His book Memory, Grief, and Agency compares Indian and North American contexts of casteism and racism to argue that wrongs today are better understood as rituals of humiliation which are socially conditioned practices of domination affected by discriminatory logics of the past enacted against people who move out of place. John’s recent works include “Religion and the Production of Affect in Caste-Based Societies” in Global Visions of Violence (Rutgers University Press, 2023) and his forthcoming co-authored (with Mizo Indigenous theologian RC Jongte) essay is titled, “Ethnography and Crucified Bodies: A Liberationist-Incarnational Approach” in Ethnography as Theology and Ethics (Bloomsbury Press). John’s essay, “Religious Amnesias, Mythologies, and Apolitical Affects in Racist Landscapes” is freely available on Religions.

John serves on the Steering Committee of the Liberation Theologies Unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and is co-convenor of the Asian and Asian American Working Group of the Society of Christian Ethics (SCE). John is a peer reviewer for journals such as Journal of the Society for Christian Ethics, Political Theology Journal and The Conrad Grebel Review where he serves also as a Consulting Editor. His formal roles (Reader and External Examiner) in shaping Ph.D. students in India, Australia, and the United States is a recognition of his interdisciplinary and transnational expertise in the areas of constructive theologies and ethics, with personal emphases in the areas of Dalit Christianity and redress of structural or systemic injustice. John speaks four Indian languages. He loves cooking and believes in the wonder working power of God, food, and laughter. John lives by the motto, “laugh or you will die.”

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