Stories

Katia Moles moved to the Religious Studies Department (2020) after teaching full time for the Sociology Department for three years. She was awarded a Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Hackworth Grant for her work on child sexual abuse prevention in Catholic institutions. The resulting article won an Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholars Award. Her article, "Teaching sexuality and Christianity for perspective transformation" is one of Teaching Theology & Religion Journal's most downloaded recent papers. She has since been awarded three additional SCU research grants and specializes in the sociology of religion/theology, gender, sexuality, race, public policy, pedagogy, and applied ethics.

Katia earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union in 2016, where she passed her qualifying exams with distinction and graduated with Highest Honors. The Unitarian Universalist Educational Panel awarded their single national dissertation fellowship to Katia for her research on religious institutions and sexuality education. She also earned multiple fellowships to design and teach three courses for Graduate Theological Union’s certificate program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and served as the Graduate Admissions Counselor for a member school. While pursuing her M.A. at Florida International University as a Teaching Fellow, she was the sole recipient of the Religious Studies Department’s Graduate Student Teaching Award.

Her service includes helping to develop the Social Justice Center, UC Berkeley, School of Law, to support activist-scholar collaborations. She currently facilitates anti-racist and inclusivity workshops for educators, administrators, and students at various institutions, including SCU, the Berkeley International House, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference, the American Sociological Association (ASA) conference, Notre Dame High School and Hi-Tech LA in Los Angeles. Katia has served on the AAR’s Feminist Theory Group’s Steering Committee since 2010, and as an Associate Editor for the Berkeley Journal of Religion (2015-2018).  She continues to serve SCU on Core Curriculum, Communications, and Pedagogy committees.

Katia is also a fully embodied human who enjoys runs, hikes, dancing, podcasts, audible books, friends, family, and joyous laughter. Having been a Group X, dance, and yoga instructor, she strives to continue her yoga and meditation practice (but knows she could be doing better). She also loves to eat yummy food and travel when she can.