The Rev. Dr. Alice W. Hunt joined Candler as an affiliate faculty member in 2019. A biblical scholar with research interests in leadership development, Hunt is also a talented administrator. She serves as the Executive Director of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) where she works to foster excellence in the academic study of religion and enhance the public understanding of religion.

Prior to joining the AAR, she served as President of Chicago Theological Seminary from 2008 to 2018, and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt Divinity School of Vanderbilt University from 2001 to 2008, where she taught courses on contemporary methods of biblical interpretation, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Song of Songs. Prior to her work in higher education, she was a systems analyst building software for Hubble Space Telescope and a high school math teacher.

Her published work includes Missing Priests: The Zadokites in Tradition and History (T & T Clark, 2006) and two edited volumes, Second Temple Studies IV: Historiography and History (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Focusing Biblical Studies: The Crucial Nature of the Persian and Hellenistic Periods: Essays in Honor of Douglas A. Knight (Bloomsbury, 2012) as well as essays.

Hunt has held leadership roles in the Chief Academic Officers Society, the Association of Theological Schools, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the AAR, where she has served on the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, the Audit Committee, the Strategic Planning Task Force, and as Chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession.

Hunt was ordained at the historic Fifteenth Avenue Baptist Church, National Baptist Convention of America, in Nashville, Tennessee, and has dual standing as a minister in the United Church of Christ. She often conducts workshops around privilege, particularly white privilege and male privilege.