The Center for Culture, Society and Religion at Princeton University is pleased to announce that Rachel Carbonara will be joining us in the Fall as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Religion and the Public Conversation. Rachel Carbonara received her Ph.D. in the Anthropology and Sociology of Religion from the University of Chicago in 2024. Her work examines New Age spirituality in the contemporary United States with a focus on practices of manifestation and energy healing. Carbonara is interested in the ways that spirituality blurs the boundaries between the secular and the religious, especially when it comes to the relationship between religion and medicine. Her work also examines contemporary American spirituality’s entanglements with late capitalism and the racialized logics of its practices of appropriation. Carbonara has conducted ethnographic research with several spiritual groups in the United States as well as with the spiritual tourism industry in Cuzco, Peru where many American travelers seek encounters with shamanic healing. In addition to her academic work, Carbonara has a passion for sharing scholarship with the broader public. During her Ph.D., she worked as a Research Fellow at NPR on the sixth season of the podcast Invisibilia. She also served as Associate Producer for the Harvard University podcast Ministry of Ideas, working on a series that explored the relationship between religion and science. Carbonara has also written scripts for the educational YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast. At the Center for Culture, Society and Religion, Carbonara will produce a podcast series that examines the intersections of spirituality and health in the contemporary United States through interviews with academic experts and narrative storytelling.