New Assistant Professor of New Testament

Brigidda Zapata Bell

Moravian Theological Seminary is excited to welcome Brigidda Zapata Bell as Assistant Professor of New Testament, beginning in fall term 2021. Brigidda will be awarded the PhD from the University of Toronto this summer. An award-winning teacher, Brigidda has taught at the Universities of Toronto, Calgary, and Alberta in Canada. Across her former institutions, Brigidda has grown programs to mentor and develop the next generation of thinkers and teachers, and her students are invited to reflect on their learning needs and build community and knowledge together. 
 
Brigidda says that she “is continuously inspired by the weird and wonderful parts of the Bible that make her stop and think about how we think the world works. Growing up travelling between Canada and Ecuador, the homelands of her parents, and between Latin American Catholicism and the Anglican Church of Canada, she experienced cultural and theological differences in biblical interpretation which ultimately invited her into biblical studies. These formative experiences of in-betweenness inform her teaching and her scholarship, which take seriously human embodiment and the centrality of our individual lived experience in our learning and thinking.” 
 
The seminary faculty and staff are looking forward to working with Brigidda to create spaces where students of different backgrounds can explore early Christian writings through new critical lenses and from diverse interpretational perspectives.