Program

9:00 am

14:00 UTC

Transnational group meeting

12:00 noon

Opening reception
Location: HUB 4th Floor

12:30 pm

17:30 UTC

Words of Welcome & Land Acknowledgement
– President Bryon Grigsby, Moravian University
– Dr. Katie Faull, Executive Director IMHWH
Location: HUB 410

1:30-3:15 pm

18:30-20:15 UTC

Session 1 – Indigenous Encounters and Land-Based Epistemologies

• Susan Ellis, Moravian Historical Society and Katelyn Lucas, Delaware National Historic Preservation Officer, Lenape Ancestors Return Home: Building Relationships Between Moravian Cultural Institutions and Indigenous Communities
• Ulrike Wiethaus, Wake Forest University, Citizens of the World? The Moravian Mission to the Cherokee in the Early Nineteenth Century as Cosmopolitan Hub and Politico-Theological Crossways
• Anca Wilkening, University of Pennsylvania, Making Relatives: Indigenous Kinship Governance and Early Moravian Missions

Session 2 – World Heritage Sites and Sustainable Communities

• Cory Dieterly, Moravian University, Sustainable Foundations: Examining the Moravian Settlement of Bethlehem and the UN’s 17 Goals for Sustainable Communities
• Thomas J. McCullough, Moravian Archives (Northern Province), The Role of Moravian Archives in Supporting World Heritage
• Steen Rosenvinge Lundbye, Christiansfeld Site Manager (remote?), Christiansfeld – 10 years as a world heritage site – the past and the future

3:30-5:15 pm

20:30-22:15 UTC

Session 3 – Indigenous Moravian Spaces and Contemporary Connections

• Joanna Kodzik, University of Versailles Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines/ University of Paris Saclay, Arctic Life Stories – Conceptualizing the Indigenous “self” in missionary writing from Greenland
• Armando Lampe, Independent researcher (remote), John was Their Name: About the Conversion of Two Maroons to the Moravian Church in the Slave Society of Suriname
• Olga Lauter, University of Texas at El Paso, Creation of Indigenous Moravian Spaces in an Alaskan City
• Rachel Wheeler, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Remembering Gnadenhütten

Session 4 – Slavery, Post-Emancipation, and the Caribbean

• John Balz, University of Wisconsin-Madison (remote), The Creole Diaries: Carriols in Eighteenth-Century Moravian Mission Stations on St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John
• Paul Peucker, Moravian Archives (Northern Province), Zinzendorf, Slavery, and the Curse of Ham
• Andrew Williams, University of the West Indies, Post-emancipation settlement near New Carmel Moravian Church, Westmoreland, Jamaica, 1835–1865

8:15-9:00 am

Light breakfast refreshments

9:00-10:30 am

14:00-15:30 UTC

Session 5 – Heritage Preservation: Case Studies

• David J. Johnston, Gracehill Trust, Reviving Gracehill’s Old Shop: A Case Study in Heritage Preservation and Community-Led Restoration
• Winelle Kirton-Roberts, New Herrnhut to Norre Gade: Architectural and ideological shift of Moravian Missions in the Danish Caribbean
• Peter Vogt, Herrnhut Moravian Church, Corpse House and Burial Vaults: Unexpected Discoveries and Challenges of Heritage Preservation in Herrnhut

Session 6 – Digital Humanities: Digitization Projects

• Zack Biro, Walt Rice, Carol Smith, A Demonstration of the Philadelphia Congregations Project’s Interactive AI Using Records from the First Moravian Church of Philadelphia
• Meaghan O’Riordan, Moravian Archives (Southern Province), Digitizing the Daily Text
• Victoria Starbuck, Independent researcher, Quantifying the Count: A Network Analysis of Themes in Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Hymns

11:00 am-12:30 pm 

16:00-17:30 UTC

Session 7 – Endurance and Belief: The Saamaka in the Modern World

• Rogério Brittes W. Pires, Federal University of Minas Gerais (remote), “God above”: Notes on Saamaka Moravian Maroons in the 21st century
• Giovanna Montenegro, Binghamton University, Saamaka Resilience: Amidst Environmental and Cultural Destruction

Session 8 – Transatlantic Perspectives

• Sally Ann Johnston, Moravian Archive of Ireland, To See Ourselves as Others See Us: 18th-19th Century Travellers’ Accounts of the Moravian Settlement of Gracehill
• Livingstone Thompson, Belfast School of Theology & Moravian Church (British Province) (remote), Exile, Refuge and Commemoration: Rev B. Patras Zula’s Thermopylae Garden at Kilwarlin Moravian Church

12:30-2:00 pm

Bag Lunch and Open House
Location: Moravian Archives

2:00-3:45 pm

17:00-20:45 UTC

Session 9 – Community Transitions and Institutional History

• Frank L. Crouch, Moravian University, School of Theology, Moravian Resistance to and Complicity with Segregated Education in the US, 1890s-1920s and Beyond
• Joshua Follweiler, Princeton Theological Seminary, Moravian Communities in Transition: Bethlehem and Winston-Salem in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
• C. Riddick Weber, Moravian University, School of Theology, The Single Brothers Deal with the Death of Their “Never-to-be Forgotten Christel”

Session 10 – Cross-Cultural Missions in Asia

• John Bray, Independent scholar (remote?), Moravian Christianity in the Tibetan Buddhist World of the Western Himalayas
• Susan Lena Kennedy, Independent researcher, Paradise Garden: Jerusalem’s Leper Home 1865 to the Present
• Pragya Sharma, University of Brighton (remote), Moravian Missionaries and Hand-Knitting in Colonial India c.18th–19th

4:00-5:15 pm

21:00-22:15 UTC

Session 11 – Moravian Diaspora In Europe

• Wolfgang Breul, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Constructing an European Network of True Believers – The Moravian Diaspora Conferences 1760–1765
• Vanessa Romero, Moravian University, The French Moravian Diaspora, 1806–1870

Session 12 – Moravians in Tanzania

• Ronald J. Mbao (remote) and Revocatus Meza, Teofilo Kisanji University (TEKU), Moravian Bishopric Office: Historical Developments and Its Pitfalls in the Tanzanian Context
• Lorraine Parsons, Provincial Archives of the Moravian Church of Great Britain and Ireland, The Pioneering Medical Work of Dr Arthur and Adie Keevill with the Moravian Missions in Tanzania

5:15-5:50 pm

Posters & Networking
Location: HUB 4th Floor

• Cory Dieterly, Moravian University, Moravian Seminary and College for Women’s Newspaper Digitization Project
• Mark Koscinski, Moravian University, How Jan Hus’s life and works had impacted the theology and practices on the Polish National Catholic Church
• David J. Johnston, Gracehill Trust, Sister Shawkirk: Our First World Heritage Guide – A Transatlantic Moravian Life

Open Networking

6:00-6:30 pm

Schattschneider Award presentation
Location: HUB 410
– Citation by Dr. Peter Vogt for the recipient, Dr. Hans Rollmann

6:30-8:30 pm

Conference Banquet (tickets required)
Location: HUB 410

8:15-9:00 am

Light breakfast refreshments
Location: Bahnson Center

9:00-10:30 am

14:00-15:30 UTC

Session 13 – Access, Interpretation, and Public Engagement
Location: Genadenal

• Richard Anderson, Moravian University, Interpreting World Heritage Through Undergraduate Video Documentary: A Case Study
• Christina Petterson (remote?), History as Heritage, Heritage as History
• Tine Ravnsted-Larsen Reeh, University of Copenhagen (remote?),“The priesthood of all believers” – on access to cultural heritage in the digital realm

Session 14 – Music, Performance, and Moravian Identity
Location: Saal

• Kyle Johnston, Moravian Music Foundation, Creating a (Nearly) Complete Collection of Moravian Chorales
• Catherine Moore, Moravian Academy, The Benigna Monologues: Interpreting Moravian History Through Performance
• Inga Strungytė-Liugienė, Institute of the Lithuanian Language, Where are the limits of religious text transformation? The case of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s hymn

11:00 am – 12:30 pm 

16:00-17:30 UTC

Session 15 – Digital Humanities: Network Analysis and AI
Location: Genadenal

• Alexander Lasch, Institute of German Studies at Dresden Technological University (remote), Research into Moravian history and world cultural heritage
• Aaron Palmore, Loyola University, The role of Latin in the Moravian world of the early Americas
• Thomas Ruhland, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (remote), Moravian Botany – The Scientific Legacy of the Moravian Church’s Global Network

Session 16 – Moravian Music as Moravian Heritage
Location: Saal

• Devandré Boonzaaier, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Embodied Spirituality: The Role of the Body in Moravian Congregational Music
• Sarah Eyerly (remote?), Interpreting Moravian Heritage Through Sound and Music
• Tom Gordon, Meeting through Song: Pre-contact Inuit and Moravian Music Traditions in Dialogue
• Christopher Ogburn, Moravian Music Foundation, Breaking the Museum: The Past, Present, and Future of Moravian Music

12:30-2:00 pm

Bag Lunch with Panel: Presenting and Interpreting Cultural Heritage – Echoes from a Symposium in Christiansfeld 2025
Location: Saal

• Alice Caldwell, Independent Scholar, The Origins and Methodology of Heinrich August Jaeschke’s 1847 Musicianship Manual: Music for Everyone
• Christina Ekström, University of Gothenburg, A Door Ajar to a Closed Musical Environment: Music-Making in the Single Sisters’ House in the Moravian Church Settlement of Christiansfeld
• Joel Speerstra, University of Gothenburg, Embodied Music-Making as Global Cultural Heritage: The Clavichord from a Moravian Perspective

2:00-3:00 pm

19:00-20:00 UTC

Session 17 – Heritage Preservation: Southern Province and Beyond

Location: Genadenal

• Martha Hartley, Old Salem Museums & Gardens, Historic Preservation and Moravian Legacy in the Southern Province: Old Salem and Beyond
• Justin Rabbach, Board of World Mission of the Moravian Church in North America, What We Wish We Knew: Designing Born-Digital Mission Archives for Future Moravian Heritage

Session 18 – Zinzendorf’s “Litany of the Wounds”

Location: Saal

• Elisabeth von Baumbach, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (remote), Zinzendorf’s 34 Homilies on the Litany of the Wounds – A Moravian Emotional Style?
• Cosima Edith Macco-Winter, Heidelberg University (remote?), At Home in Cities, Temples, Tents, and Nests: Conceptions of Heimat in Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Writings
• Chaz Snider, The Heart Still Speakers: The Heritage and Theology of Arthur J. Freeman

5:30-7:00 pm

Reception
Location: kitchen/lounge, Bahnson Center

9 and 11am

Worship at Central Moravian Church/Old Chapel

Afternoon

Optional trip to Nazareth

HBMS Tours of World Heritage site in Bethlehem