Awards

Fulbright Award - 2012

Brazil

About Kelly E. Hayes

Kelly E. Hayes is an associate professor of religious studies in the School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. She also serves as an adjunct associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies and adjunct associate professor of Africana studies. Hayes joined IUPUI's faculty in 2002. Her academic interests include Afro-Brazilian and Afro-diasporan religions, women and religion, gender/sexuality and religion, possession religions, ritual studies, new religious movements, and black magic. Since 1997, she has been conducting field research on religion in Brazil. Hayes received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991 and a M.A. in 1996 and Ph.D. in the History of Religions in 2004 both from the University of Chicago.

In 2012, Hayes received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to research at the Federal University of Rio De Janeiro in Brazil and in 2009, participated in the Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad at Moi University in Kenya. She has also received fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Endowment for Humanities and is the recipient of the 2013 Thomas Robbins Award for Excellence in the Study of New Religions. Hayes is the author of Holy Harlots: Femininity, Sexuality, and Black Magic in Brazil (University of California Press, 2011) and numerous scholarly articles.