Lisa Thompson has been named the seventeenth president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She will begin her presidency on July 1.
Union Theological Seminary is a graduate institution enrolling about 250 students, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education. Black students represent one quarter of the student population.
Dr. Thompson’s appointment marks a return to Union Theological Seminary, where she previously taught for three years. Most recently, she was the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Black Homiletics & Liturgics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Dr. Thompson has also taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.
Grounded in womanist and Black feminist epistemologies, Dr. Thompson’s scholarship explores lived religions, hermeneutical ethics, and the social consequences of religious meaning-making. She is the author of Preaching the Headlines: Pitfalls and Possibilities (Fortress Press, 2021) and Ingenuity: Preaching as an Outsider (Abingdon Press, 2018).
“I am honored to serve as the next president of Union Theological Seminary, an institution with a distinguished history of scholarship and progressive theology,” said Dr. Thompson. “Stepping into this role energizes what most inspires me: contributing to a creation enlivened by just, democratic, and generative ways of being together. I am committed to Union’s future, and the risky-yet-worthy work ahead of us. Together, with the faculty, students and staff, we will be discerning, dreaming, and building, not only for the world we can create today, but for the world we are making possible in the next 200 years.”
Dr. Thompson earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and communication studies with a minor in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and her master of divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. She received a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. in religion from Vanderbilt University.
