Elonda Clay

Director, Librarian, AI + Literacy, Scholar

Bio

To learn more about Clay’s work, click here for her curriculum vitae.

Director:
Elonda Clay is the Director of the Library at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. At MTSO, Elonda works with students and faculty to coordinate library and bibliographic instruction, information and digital literacy, and theological research methods for seminary courses.

Scholar:
Clay was recently selected as a 2025 Faith and Media Institute Fellow. She has previously been a fellow with the Forum for Theological Education, the John Templeton Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the United Methodist Women of Color, GreenFaith Coalition for the Environment, and Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover (Research Institute for Philosophy Hannover, Germany).

Recipient:
Clay has received the following awards:

  • 2024 Atlanta University Center’s Data Science Initiative and Spelman’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, “Digital Humanities Project: Religion and/as Big Data“.
  • 2021-2022 American Association for the Advancement of Science/Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSer) Science for Seminaries grant, “Questioning Science with Good Faith” funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
  • Invited Collaborator, Ecowomanist Symposium. Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. May 2024.
  • Invited Collaborator, Symposium, “Black Religion, Pedagogy, and Digital Media.” Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts. May 2023.
  • Invited Researcher, Future Humans, Human Futures Research Institute, Virginia Tech University, June 2022. Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
  • Guest Researcher, Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover, Summer 2017 “The Material Culture of Genealogy, Genetics, and the Quest for Ancestry during the Third Reich (Nazi Germany) and in the Contemporary United States”
  • 2014 Emory Center for Digital Scholarship/HBCU Library Alliance Summer Institute for Digital Scholarship. Funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
  • 2009 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Poster/Platform (Oral) Presenter Travel Award
  • 2008-2009 GreenFaith National Fellowship, GreenFaith Interfaith Coalition for the Environment

Service:
Elonda has served on the Board of Directors for the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture ( and for the American Academy of Religion. Clay also served as a member of the Steering Committee for the Religion, Media, and Culture Unit (2019-2023), the Critical Approaches to Religion and Hip Hop Unit, and the Ritual Studies Unit of the American Academy of Religion. She currently serves on the board of the Ecowomanist C.I.R.C.L.E. (Center in Research, Climate Justice, Leadership and the Environment).

Projects:
Elonda is a founding member and collaborator of the Technology, Ecology, Religion and Art (TERA) project.