ITMS Board Candidates 2025-2027
There are twelve candidates for six available positions on the Board of Directors of the International Thomas Merton Society for the term starting June 2025 and ending June 2027. As provided in the Bylaws of the ITMS, officers and directors of the society serve for two years. Terms run from General Meeting to General Meeting. Officers are elected by the Board of Directors, and board members by the membership at large. The Board of Directors has chosen the following Officers subject to ratification at the Town Hall of the June membership meeting (click here for the proposed officers for 2025-27). Elections for the Board of Directors will take place in the coming weeks by both online and paper voting. Members whose email addresses are on file will receive an invitation to vote electronically no later than March 18. Members with no available email address will be sent a paper ballot. Any ITMS members who would prefer to vote by mail may request a paper ballot by contacting the ITMS prior to April 22 by email or by calling 502-272-8177. Six directors are selected from a slate of thirteen candidates assembled by the Nominating Committee: Michael Moore, chair; Deborah Kehoe; and Emma McDonald. Click here for the list of current officers, board members, and international advisors.
Rose Marie Berger is a Catholic poet, writer, and peace activist and is a senior editor for Sojourners magazine. She has traveled to Ukraine, Colombia, Bosnia, and elsewhere to support faith-rooted peacemaking. Rose is active in the global Catholic Nonviolence Initiative. She is co-editor of Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and World. Her poetry has appeared in the books Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting a Bioregional Faith and Practice and Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: Conversations on Creation, Land Justice, and Life Together. She is a current member of the ITMS Board.
Elizabeth Burkemper graduated in 2022 from Yale Divinity School, where she studied Religion and Ecology and where she now works with the Life Worth Living Program. She earned her undergraduate degree in Peace Studies and Sustainability at the George Washington University. A 2017 Daggy Scholar, she presented on “Countering ‘Strangerness’ in Late Capitalism” at the 2021 ITMS General Meeting, and she serves as host to the Tuesdays with Merton webinar series. She currently serves on the ITMS Board of Directors.
Raymond Carr is an international public theologian. His research interests are theologically ecumenical, historically sensitive, and radically inclusive. He is a research associate and director of the “Codex Charles H. Long Papers” at the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project at Harvard University and president, Society for the Study of Black Religion (SSBR). He is the author of several articles, book chapters, and most recently Theology in the Mode of Monk: An Aesthetics of Barth and Cone on Revelation and Freedom. He currently serves on the ITMS Board and has published and presented papers at ITMS conferences.
John "Jack" Collins is a co-facilitator, together with his wife Nancy Hughes, of the Merton Chapter at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute, Shirley, MA. Jack has been an active member of the Merton Society since 2009 and is a recent graduate of the Living School at the Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, NM. He is currently doing the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,19th Annotation retreat. After thirty years on active duty in the U.S. Army Medical Department, he served five years as a VA Medical Center Director.
Abbi Fraser graduated from UCLA in 2022 with a BA in Public Affairs. She quickly dove into the world of the Catholic Worker, spending her days making soup, folding clothes, accompanying folks, and contemplating God on the subway thanks to the likes of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Gustavo Gutierrez, and her friends. A former Daggy Scholar, Abbi will be presenting "This Day Will Not Come Again" at the 2025 ITMS Conference. She currently works for TENx10, an ecumenical movement focused on radical discipleship to make faith matter more for young people.
Sylvia Grevel was recently ordained in the Anglican Church and is serving as a chaplain in aged care and is leads a weekly Queer Service in Perth, Western Australia. She is a theologian, Benedictine Oblate, and an actively engaged international advisor to the ITMS. She is currently establishing a strong Merton network in Australia, with a chapter in Perth. Sylvia has published several articles on Thomas Merton, with a particular focus on art and creativity. She has also served on the board of the European Society of Women in Theology and Religious Studies.
Emma McDonald Kennedy is assistant professor of Christian ethics at Villanova University where she teaches classes on bioethics, social ethics, and contemplation and social action. Her current research projects examine moral agency, reproductive healthcare, and biotechnologies with resources from Christian ethics and qualitative methodologies. A former Daggy Scholar, she presented at the 2019 ITMS General Meeting, was a speaker for Tuesdays with Merton in 2023, and has contributed book reviews to The Merton Seasonal and The Merton Annual. She currently serves as the ITMS Board Treasurer.
David M. Odorisio, PhD, is Associate Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, CA, where he serves as Chair of the Psychology, Religion, and Consciousness MA/PhD program. David is editor of four volumes, including: Thomas Merton in California: The Redwoods Conferences and Letters and Merton & Hinduism: The Yoga of the Heart. David is a former Shannon Fellow, Daggy Scholar was a Youth Advisor to the ITMS Board. He has published in both The Merton Seasonal and Merton Annual. David serves as Co-Chair of the Mysticism Unit for the American Academy of Religion.
Anne Pearson, a former Daggy Scholar, wrote her Honors thesis on Thomas Merton’s writings on racism and their continued relevancy in our current political and social environment. She has presented this research in Argentina and Great Britain, and as a TEDx talk. Anne also serves as the co-chair of the Daggy Scholars Committee. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., where she creates programming for graduate nursing students at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and addresses the impact of neurodiversity on education inequity.
Marcela Raggio lives in Mendoza in western Argentina and teaches American literature and specializes in translation studies at Cuyo National University (UNCuyo). In 2018, she organized the First Argentine Thomas Merton Conference at UNCuyo, and in 2021, the Second Argentine Merton Conference was held, with speakers from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, the USA, the UK and Spain. She is editing a volume with the conference papers presented on the occasion. She currently serves as an International Advisor to the ITMS.
Jim Robinson is a member of the Religious Studies department at Iona University, where he serves as Director of the Deignan Institute for Earth and Spirit. Jim is a GreenFaith fellow, and much of his teaching and scholarship emerges at the intersection of spirituality, ecology, and social justice. He is a former Shannon Fellow and currently serves as co-chair of the Daggy Scholars Committee. Jim completed his PhD at Fordham University, with a dissertation focusing on Thomas Merton and Rosemary Radford Ruether. Jim is actively involved at Agape Community, Benincasa Community, and the New York Catholic Worker.
Kathleen Witkowska Tarr is founder of the Alaska Chapter of the ITMS and author of We Are All Poets Here: Thomas Merton's Journey to Alaska. Her essays have appeared in We Are Already One: Thomas Merton's Message of Hope (2015) and Merton & Indigenous Wisdom (2019) and in The Merton Seasonal. She has presented at the Eighteenth General Meeting of the ITMS (2021) and on the Tuesdays with Merton podcast. She is former Mullin Scholar at USC's Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies and is a current member of the ITMS Board.