Dr. Julie Land

Dr. Julie Land is originally from Camano Island, Washington where she grew up enjoying the beautiful mountains and local Puget Sound. Dr. Land has her B.S. in Spanish and a Master in Divinity, and received her PhD from the University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Scotland. Her dissertation is titled, For I Have Called You Friends: A Discourse on Friendship, Disability Theology, and the Eucharist. Julie explores how a theological reading of the Gospel of John and 1 Corinthians 11.17-34 offers a theologically thick account of friendship essential for the life of the Church. Her research focuses on friendship, the theology of disability, and the Eucharist, and in these and other areas, she is interested in how the bible informs Christian ethics. While at the University of Aberdeen Julie was a doctoral Friendship House fellow.

The Friendship House (a non-residential community)
sought to join in fostering a space where people with a broad range of learning and developmental abilities could together develop a space of hospitality and welcome. Julie
has also worked as a caregiver for young adults with intellectual disabilities.

The Nouwen Fellow is a full-time, non-tenure-track member of the faculty whose responsibilities include teaching, scholarship, and program development for Western’s Center for Disability and Ministry (CDM) and the CDM’s Nurturing Children with Disabilities initiative.