About
Dr. Susan R. Holman is Senior Research Professor at Valparaiso University, with an affiliation in Christ College, the Honors College. Until 2024, she held a tenured appointment as the John R. Eckrich endowed Chair and Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts. A native of New England who spent much of her childhood in maritime Canada, Dr. Holman graduated from Concordia Bronxville and Valparaiso (BA, BS), Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy (MS), and Harvard Divinity School (MTS). She received her Ph.D. in religious studies from Brown University, with research on fourth-century Christian sermons on poverty, hunger, and disease. Dr. Holman worked for more than twenty years in healthcare, as a dietitian, medical and global health writer, and editor. Her publications focus on issues of social welfare and health disparities, ancient and modern. She is editor of Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society (BakerAcademic 2008), The Garb of Being: Embodiment and the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Ancient Christianity (Fordham, 2020), and Disability, Medicine, and Healing Discourse in Early Christianity: New Conversations for Health Humanities (Routledge, 2024). In addition to peer-reviewed chapters and articles, she is author of four books: Essentials of Nutrition for the Health Professions (1987); The Hungry are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford, 2001); God Knows There’s Need: Christian Responses to Poverty (Oxford, 2009); and Beholden: Religion, Global Heath, and Human Rights (Oxford, 2015), winner of the 2016 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. She is currently working on two book projects, on the history of healthcare in Christian communities in late antiquity and into the pre-modern era.
To relax, she enjoys travel using old-fashioned paper maps, coastal hiking and urban walking in the rain, reading, and early music. She is a tertiary member of the Order of the Holy Paraclete, a monastic community in the U.K. inspired by the life of Saint Hilda of Whitby.
Personal academic website: https://ptochotrophia.wordpress.com
