Due to the generous support of the Templeton Foundation and the Hyde Park Institute, this year we are offering Graduate Teaching Fellowships in Religion, Ethics and the Medical Sciences (REMS) at the University of Chicago with a start date of Oct 1^st 2020. REMS Teaching Fellows help advance the educational initiatives and scholarship of the Project on the Good Physician (a national longitudinal study of the moral development and professional identity formation of physicians-in-training). The overall aim of the program is to foster a learning community that leads to measurable educational outcomes in moral and professional identity formation. REMS Teaching Fellows will also explore effective teaching and programmatic practices with students of medicine or religious studies, chaplain/resident trainees, practicing physicians, and clergy/campus ministers in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. 

The REMS Teaching Fellows would receive guidance and support from multiple mentors on teaching, educational research, program design/delivery, and ongoing professional development through a collaboration with the Center for Health and Social Science (CHeSS) at the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine, and the Hyde Park Institute. This position is meant for PhD candidates at the University of Chicago who will be graduating with a degree in religious ethics or theology, and a demonstrated interest in the intersection of religion, ethics and the medical sciences. Candidates with previous teaching experience, administrative skills, and scholarship in religion, ethics and medical science will be preferred. 

REMS Teaching Fellows are expected to be fully in residence and on campus during the three quarters of the academic year, and will participate in a program of professional development under the joint supervision of the Center for Health and Social Sciences (CHeSS) and the primary faculty supervisor, Dr. John Yoon. 

2022 – 2023 PMR Fellows

Bharat Ranganathan

Assistant Director & Visiting Scholar

Bharat Ranganathan, PhD is currently the Beamer-Schneider Fellow in Ethics in the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western University. Starting in Fall 2022, he will be the Brooks Professor of Religion and Social Justice in the Religious Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Bharat’s research and teaching interests focus on how religious ethics and moral and political philosophy bear on problems in bioethics in both clinical and public health contexts, including shared decision-making under conditions of diversity and poverty as a barrier to care.

Mariana Cuceu, MD, MPH, PhD(c)

Visiting Scholar

Dr. Cuceu received her medical degree from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iuliu Hatieganu (Cluj Napoca, Romania). She is currently pursuing a PhD focusing on the intersection of medicine, religion and ethics with the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Gr. T. Popa Iasi, Romania. She earned an MPH focused on Health Policy and Administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she currently teaches clinical skills with Kaplan Medical while pursuing research to improve the clinical communication and interpersonal skills of medical doctors. In that respect, she is particularly interested on how educators can foster empathy and compassion in physicians, and sustain the humanity of the doctor-patient relationship in contemporary medicine. With respect to patients, Dr. Cuceu is interested in exploring how religious faith supports their responses to suffering and limitations brought on by illness and disability.

In her community Dr. Cuceu serves as President and co-founder of Saint Paraskeva Orthodox Charity, whose primary mission is to provide aid to orphaned and ill children. A former member of the Romanian National Olympic Team of Chemistry, Dr. Cuceu is the recipient of several awards, including a top 100 “Eastern European Students Award“ (Washington, D.C.) and the “John and Grace Nuveen International Award” (UIC) for excellence in school performance and dedication in community service and public health.

Rachel Carbonara

PMR Teaching Fellow 2022-2023

Rachel Carbonara is a Doctoral Candidate in Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Her research examines energy healing practices and holistic medical philosophies in the modern United States. She is also Associate Producer of the Harvard Divinity School podcast, Ministry of Ideas, and is working on a series of episodes to be released in the spring of 2022 that examine the relationship between religion and science.

Halley Haruta

PMR Research Fellow 2022-2023

Halley is a second-year Master of Divinity student at the University of Chicago. Previously, she was an undergraduate at Smith College, where she studied religion and psychology. Her research at the PMR examines scrupulosity, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder, from both psychological and theological perspectives. She is interested in the role of caregivers to individuals with scrupulosity, as well as the broader ethical and theological implications of this disorder.

Ashley Aguilar

PMR Research Fellow 2022-2023

Ashley Aguilar is a rising second-year Master of Public Policy student pursuing a certificate in health administration and policy (GPHAP). Her research interests are in human flourishing, early child education, and religious coping. She is interested in the potential for research in these areas to reduce inequality of opportunity. During the Summer of 2022 as an Arthur Quern fellow and throughout the 2023-2023 academic year as a PMR fellow, she is pursuing research that aims to characterize the determinants of human flourishing among residents of Harvey, IL and the extent to which religious or spiritual practice is utilized to cope with prevalent stressors.

Kunal Kanaparti

PMR Research Fellow 2022-2023

Kunal Kanaparti graduated from Harvard University in 2021. As an aspiring physician, he hopes both to practice medicine in a clinical setting and to study the ethical considerations of implementing new medical technologies and standards of care, with a targeted focus on advocating for patient rights and autonomy in healthcare settings; he aims to use his experience as a clinical physician to better understand the relationships that patients have with healthcare systems, so that he may contribute to implementing actionable solutions that help to preserve patient autonomy. Kunal also has strong interests in exploring how to optimize the patient-physician relationship and, relatedly, learning how physicians can learn to best serve patient interests.

2021 – 2022 REMS Visiting Scholar

Chaïma Ahaddour, PhD

Visiting Scholar (Guest Scientist)

Chaïma Ahaddour is the assistant professor of Islamic Ethics at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, where she is a member of the Research Unit Theological and Comparative Ethics. Her areas of specialization are: Islamic ethics, ethical issues at the beginning and end of life, end-of-life care.

Chaïma obtained her doctoral degree in Religious Studies at the KU Leuven. She has worked on a doctoral dissertation on the attitudes, beliefs and practices regarding death and dying among middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women living in Antwerp, Belgium. Currently, Chaïma’s research focuses on Islamic perspectives on issues at the beginning of life, including prenatal diagnosis and termination of pregnancy.

2020 – 2021 REMS Teaching Fellows

Daniel T. Kim, MA, MPH, PhD

Assistant Director
2020-2021 Templeton Teaching Fellow in Religion, Ethics, and the Medical Sciences
2020-2021 William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellow at the Divinity School

Daniel T. Kim, MA, MPH, PHD was a PhD Candidate in Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago, Divinity School and is now an Assistant Professor in the Alden March Bioethics Institute of Albany Medical College. He received his master’s degrees in religious ethics and public health from Yale University, and has since published on medicine, ethics, and religion in leading academic journals. He previously served as Senior Program Manager of the Program on Medicine and Religion (2010-2016), as an organizer for its national series of Conferences on Medicine and Religion (2012-2016), and as Managing Editor of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics (2010-2017). Daniel’s current project Modern Medicine and the Hermeneutical Self: Meaning, Ethics, and Identity draws on the moral theories of Charles Taylor and Augustine to interrogate a range of bioethical concerns that grow out of his work at the Program on Medicine and Religion, including clinician malaise and health justice. His research interests extend also to questions of moral and spiritual significance in end-of-life care, biotechnology, and research ethics. Daniel also recently served as Senior Associate of the Center for Ethics and Professionalism at the American College of Physicians (2017-2019).

Caroline Anglim, MA, PhD

Co-Assistant Director
2020-2021 Templeton Teaching Fellow in Religion, Ethics, and the Medical Sciences
2020-2021 Martin Marty Center Fellow at the Divinity School

Caroline Anglim, MA, was a PhD candidate in Religious Ethics at the University of Chicago, Divinity School and and will soon be the Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Professionalism in the Department of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Mercer University School of Medicine (Macon, GA). Her dissertation research approaches medical ethics as a space of public, democratic discourse. She is working to identify analytical categories and conceptual distinctions in theories of democracy to make those relevant and useful to medical ethicists as they address issues of religious pluralism in American public health systems. She is pursuing this project with the support of a Martin Marty Center junior Fellowship, which fosters interdisciplinary scholarship on issues of religion in public life. She is currently an Alma Wilson Teaching Fellow for the Divinity School and College and has previously served as the Coordinator of the Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion (2019-2020). In 2019, Caroline helped to organize and lead the Program on Medicine and Religion’s “Religious Dimensions of Healthcare Delivery, a conference for clinicians and chaplains in the greater Chicago area.