Michael Baysa is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. A scholar of religion, history, and media, he is interested in the influence of cultural brokers, media managers, and publishing intermediaries on the material curation, production, and distribution of religious and racial discourse. His soon-to-be published article titled “Printing, Publics, and Pudding: Charles Chauncy’s Universal Salvation and the Transformation of New England Orthodoxy” in Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture was awarded the Sidney E. Mead Prize for the best unpublished article stemming from dissertation research that contributes significantly to its field and to the history of Christianity more broadly.

Michael’s work has been supported by research fellowships from Library Company of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the American Antiquarian Society. During the 2021-2022 academic year, he was the recipient of the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Fellowship in Early American Religious Studies at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies in Philadelphia. He has presented his research at various conferences, including the annual meetings for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), American Society of Church History (ASCH), and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), and his commentaries on religion in public life has appeared in outlets like The University of Chicago Divinity School’s Sightings, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Center for Asian American Christianity online publications, and Patheos’ Anxious Bench.

Prior to his position at Washington University, Michael received his Ph.D. from Princeton’s Department of Religion in 2023, his S.T.M at Boston University in 2017, and M.Div. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 2016. He also holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Boston University’s Questrom School of Management and worked as a paralegal in a financial services company for five years before starting his doctoral program. He is currently on the job market.