Willis Jenkins

Willis Jenkins is Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. Jenkins is author of two award-winning books, Ecologies of Grace and The Future of Ethics and co-editor of several books, including the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Current research focuses on climate justice, ethics amidst extinctions, multispecies methods in the study of religion, and contemplative ecologies. Jenkins co-directs the Coastal Futures Conservatory which integrates arts and humanities into coastal change research at the National Science Foundation’s Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research site.

Publications:

Jenkins, Willis, and Stefan Skrimshire. “Loving Swarms: Religious Ethics & Mass Extinctions”. Extinction and Religion, edited by Jeremy H. Kidwell, Indiana University Press, 2024, pp. 16-59.

Jenkins, Willis. “Ethics after Humanity”. Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 51, no. 4, 2023, pp. 611-38.

Jenkins, Willis. “Values-Based Scenarios of Water Security: Rights to Water, Rights of Waters, and Commercial Water Rights”. BioScience, vol. 71, no. 11, 2021, pp. 1157–1170, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab088.

Jenkins, Willis. “Religion and Climate Change: An Emerging Research Agenda”. Understanding Climate Change Through Religious Lifeworlds, edited by David L. Haberman, Indiana University Press, 2021, pp. 284-05.

Jenkins, Willis. “Coastal Futures Conservatory: Listening as a Model for Integrating Arts and Humanities into Environmental Change Research”. Environmental Humanities, vol. 13, no. 1, 2021, pp. 201-23, https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8867274.

Jenkins, Willis. “Sacred Places and Planetary Stresses: Sanctuaries as Laboratories of Religious and Ecological Change”. Religions, vol. 11, no. 5, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11050215.

Jenkins, Willis. “The Mysterious Silence of Mother Earth in Laudato Si'”. Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 46, no. 3, 2018, pp. 441–462, https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12226.

Jenkins, Willis, et al. “Religion and Climate Change”. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, vol. 43, 2018, pp. 85-108, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025855.

Jenkins, Willis. “Whose Religion? Which Ecology?: Religious Studies in the Environmental Humanities”. Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology, edited by Willis Jenkins et al., Routledge, 2017, pp. 22-32.

Jenkins, Willis, et al., editors. Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Routledge, 2017.

Jenkins, Willis. “The Turn to Virtue in Climate Ethics: Wickedness and Goodness in the Anthropocene”. Environmental Ethics, vol. 38, no. 1, 2016, pp. 77-96, https://doi.org/10.5840/enviroethics20163816.