Presentations
August 2023. "Reflections of Humans in Space," a workshop for the International Space University's 2023 Space Studies Program at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica in São José dos Campos, Brazil.
June 2023. "An Outrageous View of the Heavens: The Ultraview Effect as a Cognitive and Cultural Response to the Panorama of Deep Space", Cultural WG webinar – Deep Space: Awe Or Fright?. Moon Village Association, Vienna, Austria (presented online).
April 2023. “Avoiding Annihilation: Human Salvation through Planet B and Other Spiritual Missions of the Private Space Industry,” University of Southern California, hosted by the Confronting the Second Space Age: From Cosmic Speculation to Astro-Capitalism Working Group and the Department of Anthropology.
November 2022. “Outer Space as Sacred Space: On the Religious Lives of Space Professionals,” Fyrecon Education Conference for Writers and Artists, Salt Lake City, Utah (presented online).
April 2022. "A Conversation with Deana Weibel, Author of A Sacred Vertigo," hosted by Michael Di Giovine, editor of the Lexington Books series The Anthropology of Pilgrimage: Heritage, Mobility, and Society.
November 2021. “A Sacred Vertigo” for the Sacred Journeys session of the Explorers Club Pathfinders Symposium. (Virtual conference)
July 2021, “Through the Courtesy of Mr. R. Schneidewind”: “Igorrote Villages” as Anthropological Projects and Research Sites in the Early Twentieth Century” at the joint Virtual Conference of EASA's Europeanist Network (EuroNet) and History of Anthropology Network (HOAN) (Virtual conference)
May 2021, “Bringing Anthropology to Outer Space: Sacred Travel, Destiny, and the Motivating Force of Optimism,” Explorers Club Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter meeting,
March 2021. “‘How Can You Steward What You Don’t Know?’: Religious and Spiritual Motivations for and the Understanding from Robotic Space Exploration,” Explorers Club Northern California Chapter meeting,
January 2020, “One Giant Leap (of Faith): Astronaut Religiosity and the Experience of Being in Outer Space” (poster presentation) at the NASA Human Research Program Investigators Workshop, Galveston, TX.
November 2019, "Religion in Time and Space," a Skype-A-Scientist presentation for Ms. Willis' class at Vermilion Forks Elementary in Princeton, British Columbia.
November 2019, “Inevitability, Adaptability, Destiny: Religious and Non-Religious Arguments for a Human Future in Outer Space” at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop meetings, Wichita, Kansas.
November 2019, Panel member for the Sagan Meetings on the topic of ethnics and space settlement at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop meetings, Wichita, Kansas.
May 2019, “Something Beyond What We Understand”: Shifting between Scientific and Religious Models of the Universe in Space Professionals’ Conceptualizations of Outer Space” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
March 2019 “’Whatever you do, do as if for God and not for man’: Integration, compartmentalization, and the role of religiosity in space work,” Vatican Observatory, Vatican City.
November 2018. "What is a Martian? Changing Ideas about Life on the Red Planet," Grand Rapids Montessori School,
November 2018, “The Overview Effect and the Ultraview Effect : How Extreme Experiences in Outer Space Affect Religious Beliefs in Astronauts” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, San Jose, California.
“Confronting the Martian: Humanity’s Changing Concepts about Life on the Red Planet,” GVSU Art Gallery, October 2018.
May 2017 “’Time from Eternity to Eternity’: Space Exploration and the Astronaut experience of God’s Worldview” (co-authored with Joshua Ambrosius) at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana.
February 2017 “Witnesses to the Heavens: Space Exploration in a Religious Context" at the Roger That!: A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B. Chaffee conference, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
November 2016, “ Medieval ’Miracle of Equilibrium’ or Contemporary ‘Sanctuary of Rock-Hard Faith’?: How Digital Media Guides Visitors’ Experiences at the Shrine of Rocamadour, France” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
June 2016, “Academics at the Fairs: Linguistic and Cultural Research with Exhibited Igorots in the Early 20th Century” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, California.
November 2015, Discussant, panel on “The Seductions of Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys Afar and Astray in the Western Religious Tradition,” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Denver, Colorado.
November 2015, “Mock Rituals, Sham Battles, and Real Research: Anthropologists and the Ethnographic Study of the Bontoc Igorot in 1900s ‘Igorrote Villages’” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Denver, Colorado.
April 2015, “Communitas, Morality, Sorrow and Truth: Supernatural Means of Ascertaining Unorthodox Histories of Religiously Significant Sites,” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meetings, San Diego, California.
March 2015, “Teaching Anthropology Is Not a ‘Sin’: Emphasizing the Practical Aspects of the Anthropology Major” (co-authored with Tara Hefferan and Elizabeth Arnold) at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
December 2014, “Religious Creatives, Sacredness and the Anthropologist,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
December 2014, “A Guide to Conquest: What Crusades Tourism Reveals about the Construction of French National Identity” (co-authored with Meagan Roche) at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
May, 2014 "Transportable Awe: Sacred Contagion as Enrichment," at the Cognitive Science of Religion, Philosophy and Theology Conference, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
February 2014 “To Make a Man Appreciate the Creation of God: Space Travel and the Sacred” with Glen Swanson (Physics), GVSU Art Gallery,
November, 2013 "To Sink or to Swim: An Ethnographer's Trial by Water" at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
April, 2013 "Syncretism in the Service of Colonialism: The Universalizing Approach of Religious Creativism" at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Pasadena, California.
October, 2012. "Igorots, Anthropologists, and "Igorrote Villages": The Impact of Ethnography as Imperialism” at the 9th International Conference on the Philippines (ICOPHIL), Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
November, 2011. “A Savage at the Wedding and the Skeletons in My Closet: My Great-Grandfather, “Igorotte Villages,” and the Ethnological Expositions of the 1900s” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
November, 2011. "Diversity in Religion," a presentation given as part of GVSU's Inclusion and Diversity Seminar.
June, 2011. “Performers, Interpreters and the Showman Onstage and Offstage at the AYPE Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, California.
April, 2011. “’Up in God’s Great Cathedral’: An Analysis of an Astronaut’s Personal Relationship with Divinity” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
April, 2011. “Medicine and Miracles: Science and Religion at Lourdes, France”, A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
November, 2010. ”The Pilgrim/Tourist Loop: When the Movement of Compostela Pilgrims off the Camino Leads to Circular Patterns of Identity” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana.
August, 2010. "Performers, Interpreters and the Showman Onstage and Offstage at the AYPE Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village ’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the Eighth International Igorot Consultation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.
March 2010 "Sacred Sites and ‘Energy’: Using Science to Describe the Spiritual", A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
February 2010 “The Humanities Connection to Soul Catchers,” a panel discussion at Frederick Meijer Gardens, February 2010.
December, 2009. “Gathering Energy: Pilgrimage, Spaceflight and the Transformation of Objects” (co-authored with Valerie Olson) at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
September, 2009. “Performers, Interpreters and the Showman: Onstage and Offstage at the Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exposition Centennial: Asian Symposium, Seattle, Washington.
April 2009 “Religion and Space,” a presentation at the Spring Lake District Library.
March 2009 "Moving Closer to God(s): Why Pilgrims Make Pilgrimages", A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
March, 2009. “’I Have Filled it With Energy!’: The Manufacture of Fetishistic Relics by Voyagers to Sacred Space(s)” (co-authored with Valerie Olson), at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion/Psychological Anthropological Association joint meetings, Asilomar, California.
March 2008 “Richard Schneidewind’s Igorot Village: Early Anthropology and the Display of Philippine ‘Savages’ in the United States,” with Patricia Afable. Special Presentation of the GVSU Department of Anthropology.
February 2008 “Religion and the Supernatural in the American Space Program,” with Glen Swanson, A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
December, 2007. “Blind in a Land of Visionaries: When a Non-Pilgrim Studies Pilgrimage,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
April, 2007. “The Nuns of Rocamadour: ‘Itinerant Missionaries’ at the Border between Religion and Secularism,” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona.
November, 2006. “The Secular Saint: Francis Poulenc as an Exemplar of Tourist-to-Pilgrim Transformation,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, San Jose, California.
February 2005 “Secularism and Religiosity at Rocamadour” The Ways of the Earth’s Symposium on Inter-Religious Struggle, GVSU.
December, 2004. “Malinowski in Orbit: Magical Thinking in the U.S. and Soviet Manned Space Programs” (co-authored with Glen E. Swanson), at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Atlanta, Georgia (also chaired the panel, “At the Crossroads of Magic and Science”).
November 2004 “Communion on the Moon: Spirituality and Human Spaceflight,” with Glen E. Swanson, GVSU’s Anthropology Club’s “Brown Bag” presentation, GVSU.
November 2004 “You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’: Dance and Other Forms of Movement inspired by the Divine,” Interfaith Dialogue Association Conference, Aquinas College.
March 2004 “The Virgin Mary: God’s Mother or Mother Goddess?” The Ways of the Earth’s Sacred Feminine symposium, GVSU.
November, 2003 “Whose Shrine is it Anyway?” the American Anthropological Assoc Annual Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
June 2001 "Judaism and the New Age Movement," San Diego Secular Humanistic Judaism Society, San Diego, Ca.
November, 2000 “‘The Energy We Call the Goddess’: The Religious Creativist Use of a Roman Catholic Shrine,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, San Francisco.
April, 2000 “The New Age and the Old World: The Interpretation and Use of European Shrines by ‘Religious Creatives,’” at the Western Social Science Association Convention, San Diego.
June 2023. "An Outrageous View of the Heavens: The Ultraview Effect as a Cognitive and Cultural Response to the Panorama of Deep Space", Cultural WG webinar – Deep Space: Awe Or Fright?. Moon Village Association, Vienna, Austria (presented online).
April 2023. “Avoiding Annihilation: Human Salvation through Planet B and Other Spiritual Missions of the Private Space Industry,” University of Southern California, hosted by the Confronting the Second Space Age: From Cosmic Speculation to Astro-Capitalism Working Group and the Department of Anthropology.
November 2022. “Outer Space as Sacred Space: On the Religious Lives of Space Professionals,” Fyrecon Education Conference for Writers and Artists, Salt Lake City, Utah (presented online).
April 2022. "A Conversation with Deana Weibel, Author of A Sacred Vertigo," hosted by Michael Di Giovine, editor of the Lexington Books series The Anthropology of Pilgrimage: Heritage, Mobility, and Society.
November 2021. “A Sacred Vertigo” for the Sacred Journeys session of the Explorers Club Pathfinders Symposium. (Virtual conference)
July 2021, “Through the Courtesy of Mr. R. Schneidewind”: “Igorrote Villages” as Anthropological Projects and Research Sites in the Early Twentieth Century” at the joint Virtual Conference of EASA's Europeanist Network (EuroNet) and History of Anthropology Network (HOAN) (Virtual conference)
May 2021, “Bringing Anthropology to Outer Space: Sacred Travel, Destiny, and the Motivating Force of Optimism,” Explorers Club Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter meeting,
March 2021. “‘How Can You Steward What You Don’t Know?’: Religious and Spiritual Motivations for and the Understanding from Robotic Space Exploration,” Explorers Club Northern California Chapter meeting,
January 2020, “One Giant Leap (of Faith): Astronaut Religiosity and the Experience of Being in Outer Space” (poster presentation) at the NASA Human Research Program Investigators Workshop, Galveston, TX.
November 2019, "Religion in Time and Space," a Skype-A-Scientist presentation for Ms. Willis' class at Vermilion Forks Elementary in Princeton, British Columbia.
November 2019, “Inevitability, Adaptability, Destiny: Religious and Non-Religious Arguments for a Human Future in Outer Space” at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop meetings, Wichita, Kansas.
November 2019, Panel member for the Sagan Meetings on the topic of ethnics and space settlement at the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop meetings, Wichita, Kansas.
May 2019, “Something Beyond What We Understand”: Shifting between Scientific and Religious Models of the Universe in Space Professionals’ Conceptualizations of Outer Space” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
March 2019 “’Whatever you do, do as if for God and not for man’: Integration, compartmentalization, and the role of religiosity in space work,” Vatican Observatory, Vatican City.
November 2018. "What is a Martian? Changing Ideas about Life on the Red Planet," Grand Rapids Montessori School,
November 2018, “The Overview Effect and the Ultraview Effect : How Extreme Experiences in Outer Space Affect Religious Beliefs in Astronauts” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, San Jose, California.
“Confronting the Martian: Humanity’s Changing Concepts about Life on the Red Planet,” GVSU Art Gallery, October 2018.
May 2017 “’Time from Eternity to Eternity’: Space Exploration and the Astronaut experience of God’s Worldview” (co-authored with Joshua Ambrosius) at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana.
February 2017 “Witnesses to the Heavens: Space Exploration in a Religious Context" at the Roger That!: A Celebration of Space Exploration in Honor of Roger B. Chaffee conference, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
November 2016, “ Medieval ’Miracle of Equilibrium’ or Contemporary ‘Sanctuary of Rock-Hard Faith’?: How Digital Media Guides Visitors’ Experiences at the Shrine of Rocamadour, France” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
June 2016, “Academics at the Fairs: Linguistic and Cultural Research with Exhibited Igorots in the Early 20th Century” at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, California.
November 2015, Discussant, panel on “The Seductions of Pilgrimage: Sacred Journeys Afar and Astray in the Western Religious Tradition,” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Denver, Colorado.
November 2015, “Mock Rituals, Sham Battles, and Real Research: Anthropologists and the Ethnographic Study of the Bontoc Igorot in 1900s ‘Igorrote Villages’” at the American Anthropological Association meetings, Denver, Colorado.
April 2015, “Communitas, Morality, Sorrow and Truth: Supernatural Means of Ascertaining Unorthodox Histories of Religiously Significant Sites,” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meetings, San Diego, California.
March 2015, “Teaching Anthropology Is Not a ‘Sin’: Emphasizing the Practical Aspects of the Anthropology Major” (co-authored with Tara Hefferan and Elizabeth Arnold) at the Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
December 2014, “Religious Creatives, Sacredness and the Anthropologist,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
December 2014, “A Guide to Conquest: What Crusades Tourism Reveals about the Construction of French National Identity” (co-authored with Meagan Roche) at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
May, 2014 "Transportable Awe: Sacred Contagion as Enrichment," at the Cognitive Science of Religion, Philosophy and Theology Conference, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
February 2014 “To Make a Man Appreciate the Creation of God: Space Travel and the Sacred” with Glen Swanson (Physics), GVSU Art Gallery,
November, 2013 "To Sink or to Swim: An Ethnographer's Trial by Water" at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
April, 2013 "Syncretism in the Service of Colonialism: The Universalizing Approach of Religious Creativism" at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Pasadena, California.
October, 2012. "Igorots, Anthropologists, and "Igorrote Villages": The Impact of Ethnography as Imperialism” at the 9th International Conference on the Philippines (ICOPHIL), Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
November, 2011. “A Savage at the Wedding and the Skeletons in My Closet: My Great-Grandfather, “Igorotte Villages,” and the Ethnological Expositions of the 1900s” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
November, 2011. "Diversity in Religion," a presentation given as part of GVSU's Inclusion and Diversity Seminar.
June, 2011. “Performers, Interpreters and the Showman Onstage and Offstage at the AYPE Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Pacific Division’s Annual Meeting, San Diego, California.
April, 2011. “’Up in God’s Great Cathedral’: An Analysis of an Astronaut’s Personal Relationship with Divinity” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion meetings, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
April, 2011. “Medicine and Miracles: Science and Religion at Lourdes, France”, A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
November, 2010. ”The Pilgrim/Tourist Loop: When the Movement of Compostela Pilgrims off the Camino Leads to Circular Patterns of Identity” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans, Louisiana.
August, 2010. "Performers, Interpreters and the Showman Onstage and Offstage at the AYPE Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village ’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the Eighth International Igorot Consultation, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia.
March 2010 "Sacred Sites and ‘Energy’: Using Science to Describe the Spiritual", A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
February 2010 “The Humanities Connection to Soul Catchers,” a panel discussion at Frederick Meijer Gardens, February 2010.
December, 2009. “Gathering Energy: Pilgrimage, Spaceflight and the Transformation of Objects” (co-authored with Valerie Olson) at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
September, 2009. “Performers, Interpreters and the Showman: Onstage and Offstage at the Pay Streak’s ‘Igorotte Village’” (co-authored with Patricia Afable) at the Alaska- Yukon-Pacific Exposition Centennial: Asian Symposium, Seattle, Washington.
April 2009 “Religion and Space,” a presentation at the Spring Lake District Library.
March 2009 "Moving Closer to God(s): Why Pilgrims Make Pilgrimages", A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
March, 2009. “’I Have Filled it With Energy!’: The Manufacture of Fetishistic Relics by Voyagers to Sacred Space(s)” (co-authored with Valerie Olson), at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion/Psychological Anthropological Association joint meetings, Asilomar, California.
March 2008 “Richard Schneidewind’s Igorot Village: Early Anthropology and the Display of Philippine ‘Savages’ in the United States,” with Patricia Afable. Special Presentation of the GVSU Department of Anthropology.
February 2008 “Religion and the Supernatural in the American Space Program,” with Glen Swanson, A Grand Dialogue in Science and Religion Annual Conference.
December, 2007. “Blind in a Land of Visionaries: When a Non-Pilgrim Studies Pilgrimage,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Washington, D.C.
April, 2007. “The Nuns of Rocamadour: ‘Itinerant Missionaries’ at the Border between Religion and Secularism,” at the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona.
November, 2006. “The Secular Saint: Francis Poulenc as an Exemplar of Tourist-to-Pilgrim Transformation,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, San Jose, California.
February 2005 “Secularism and Religiosity at Rocamadour” The Ways of the Earth’s Symposium on Inter-Religious Struggle, GVSU.
December, 2004. “Malinowski in Orbit: Magical Thinking in the U.S. and Soviet Manned Space Programs” (co-authored with Glen E. Swanson), at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Atlanta, Georgia (also chaired the panel, “At the Crossroads of Magic and Science”).
November 2004 “Communion on the Moon: Spirituality and Human Spaceflight,” with Glen E. Swanson, GVSU’s Anthropology Club’s “Brown Bag” presentation, GVSU.
November 2004 “You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’: Dance and Other Forms of Movement inspired by the Divine,” Interfaith Dialogue Association Conference, Aquinas College.
March 2004 “The Virgin Mary: God’s Mother or Mother Goddess?” The Ways of the Earth’s Sacred Feminine symposium, GVSU.
November, 2003 “Whose Shrine is it Anyway?” the American Anthropological Assoc Annual Meetings, Chicago, Illinois.
June 2001 "Judaism and the New Age Movement," San Diego Secular Humanistic Judaism Society, San Diego, Ca.
November, 2000 “‘The Energy We Call the Goddess’: The Religious Creativist Use of a Roman Catholic Shrine,” at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, San Francisco.
April, 2000 “The New Age and the Old World: The Interpretation and Use of European Shrines by ‘Religious Creatives,’” at the Western Social Science Association Convention, San Diego.