Alexandra M. Daley

Education

• University of Virginia - PhD in Religious Studies (in progress)
• Emory University - Master of Divinity
• Florida Southern College - Bachelor of Arts in Religion

Bio

Alexandra Daley is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, working at the intersection of the theology of Karl Barth, feminist theology, and trauma theology. Her dissertation constructs a pneumatological account of divine solidarity, asking whether and how grace reaches those who bear the wounds of others' sin. She argues that while Barth's theology powerfully insists on the sovereignty and freedom of divine grace, it struggles to describe how that grace is concretely mediated in traumatized and violated lives; the Spirit, for Barth, remains the subjective side of revelation rather than an abiding, relational presence drawing near to the wounded. Daley turns to feminist and trauma theologies to supply what this framework lacks—a language of divine solidarity, intimacy, and accompaniment adequate to the particularity of suffering—and proposes a renewed doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the site where doctrinal determinacy and relational concreteness illuminate rather than oppose one another. Her broader research interests include the doctrine of God, theological anthropology, and the problem of evil and suffering; she also maintains an interest in clinical ethics.