Ella Myer-Arnold

Dr. Ella Myer-Arnold is an affiliated faculty member and the director of Candler’s Certificate in Justice, Peacebuilding, and Conflict Transformation (JPACT). A scholar of Christian social ethics and memory studies, Myer-Arnold’s research explores the ethical dimensions of how communities narrate, materialize, and mobilize history, with particular attention to the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, Memory Studies, and the Stellenbosch Theological Journal.

In addition to her academic scholarship, she is a public humanities practitioner and serves as senior researcher and series editor for Trouble the Land: A Personal History of the Civil Rights Movement in Five Southern Cities, a multimedia project published through Southern Spaces. The project brings together oral histories, archival materials, and digital storytelling to stimulate critical discussion about the civil rights movement and the process of societal transformation among scholars, activists, educators, students, and the general public.

Myer-Arnold co-chairs the American Academy of Religion’s Religion and Memory Unit and the Memory Studies Association’s Memory Activism Working Group.
Through both her scholarship and teaching, Myer-Arnold strives to equip students and communities to thoughtfully engage complex and painful histories and to work toward more just and peaceful futures.

CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES

“Trailblazer No More: Pauli Murray’s Use of History and Memory,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 46, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2026).

Series Editor,  Trouble the Land: A Personal History of the Civil Rights Movement in Five Southern Cities, a multimedia project published through Southern Spaces (February, 2026)

“If These Queer Walls Could Talk: Queer Monumentality and The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” Memory Studies 18, no. 2 (2025): 528–44.

“Queer Monumentality: The Power and Ethics of Symbolic Form,” STJ – Stellenbosch Theological Journal (Spring 2022).

Digital Humanities Fellowship, Emory University, 2025–2026

Edward A. Dowey Jr. Award for Excellence in Reformation Theology, Princeton Seminary, 2020

Archibald Alexander Hodge Award in Systematic Theology, Princeton Seminary, 2019

Introduction to Christian Ethics and Memory Ethics and the Rev. Pauli Murray