Bio

I am a cultural and historical anthropologist of religion, and I am especially interested in the history of globalizing Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

My recent academic work has mainly centered around two book projects. My first book examined the intersection of Christianity and colonialism and is titled Mission Station Christianity: Norwegian Missionaries in Colonial Natal and Zululand, Southern Africa 1850-1890 (Brill, 2013). My second project asks how the transnational first-wave women's movement changed Christianity, and I focus particularly on a case study of the so-called "mission feminists" in early-twentieth-century Norway. I argue that these (usually conservative) Protestant mission women made surprising gains in gender equality within Christian circles by using new Christian ways of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It has the provisional working title "Women and Words in Christianity."

And I live in one of the USA's welcoming college towns - Athens, GA - with my husband and two lively girls. I teach at the University of Georgia, where I am a Limited-Term Lecturer in Global Christianity. I have a joint appointment between the Religion Department and the African Studies Institute, and I'm an affiliate faculty member of the Institute for Women's Studies. My classes include Global Christianity; Women in Christian History; and Christianity, Mission, and International Development in Africa.
 

Education

2006 PhD Social Anthropology, SOAS University of London
2002 MSc Political Economy of Violence, Conflict and Development, SOAS University of London
2001 BA(Hons) International Development Studies, University of East Anglia
 
 

Contact

If you work on similar research topics, get in touch. I can be contacted on twitter @IngieHovland and via email at:
ingiehovland [at] uga [dot] edu