Hillary Kaell

Hillary Kaell is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Religion with a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University, specializing in North American Christianity through interdisciplinary approaches.

Her academic credentials include:

• M.A. from the University of Toronto
• Ph.D. from Harvard University

Professor Kaell's research centers on Christianity and Messianic Judaism in the United States and Quebec, employing material and sensory studies to analyze capitalism, consumption, and monetization in tourism, heritage creation, and charitable corporations. She investigates how U.S. Christians construct real and imagined connections with distant symbolic sites like the Holy Land and the Global Church, operating at the intersection of anthropology of religion, material culture, and spatial theory.

Her publication trajectory reveals consistent engagement with material dimensions of religious practice, evolving from pilgrimage studies (Walking Where Jesus Walked, 2014) to everyday religion in Quebec (Everyday Sacred, 2017) and global humanitarian networks (Christian Globalism at Home, 2020). These works demonstrate methodological innovation in tracing global religious networks through local material practices and spatial imaginaries.

Professor Kaell co-edits the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion book series with Palgrave Macmillan and serves as senior curator of New Directions in Anthropology of Christianity. She holds faculty fellowships with Yale University's Material Economies of Religion in the Americas (MERA) project and Concordia University's Centre for Sensory Studies, reflecting her commitment to collaborative, cross-institutional research on religion's material dimensions.