
As a US Fulbright Scholar, Dr Rebecca Young is researching indigenous pre-Christian spirituality and religious beliefs in the Papua highlands. The research project lasts from September 2024 to May 2025. This project focuses on the beliefs and faith practices of the people of the Papua highlands prior to the arrival of missionaries in the 1950s and 1960s and will record and transcribe oral histories of Papuans who were alive before missionaries arrived.
Dr Young is collaborating with Dr Yumasdaleni. S.Ag., M.Si., PhD, a senior researcher at the Religion and Beliefs Research Center of the Social Science and Humanities Research Organization of BRIN, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (the National Research and Innovation Agency) in Jakarta.
In the US, Dr Young is a professor of systematic theology, having taught at Fordham University in New York, Demorest College in Georgia, Jakarta Theological Seminary in Jakarta, Artha Wacana Christian University in Kupang, and Reformed Theological Seminary in Wamena. Her primary fields of research are ecotheology and theology of disaster. Dr Young has a master of Public Health in maternal and child nutrition and oversaw the implementation of a three-year USAID grant for nutrition education in the Papua highlands. From 2005 to 2013, she administrated a $16 million relief and rehabilitation project in Sumatra, Nias, Sri Lanka, and India following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.