Co-Chair
Emily Wright (she/her) is the 2026 Co-Chair of the GCRE and a second-year MAR in Religion and Ecology at Yale Divinity School. Just two hours south of her hometown in Arizona, she earned her bachelor's degree at UArizona, where she was awarded the Centennial Achievement Undergraduate Award for her work in Journalism and Religious Studies. At YDS, she works as a coordinator in the DivFarm community garden and helps direct the Women's Center. Her academic interests include queer and spiritual ecologies, embodiment, critical disability studies, and enduring networks of care in the face of extractive regimes. In her free time, Emily loves to journal, garden, dance, and collage!
Co-Chair
Margaret Witkofsky is the 2026 Co-Chair of the Graduate Conference in Religion and Ecology and a second year M.A.R. Student at Yale Divinity School with a concentration in religion and ecology. She is interested in how people connect to place through art and writes her own eco-poetry where she explores themes of flourishing, our relations to other people within an ecological framework, urban belonging, and how suffering and death are inseparable from the land. She grew up along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland but completed her undergraduate degree in Lexington, VA at Washington and Lee University. She previously served as an Art and Communications Coordinator and is so excited to once again work to put on GCRE! Margaret is looking forward to how people interpret this year’s theme and ultimately find hope at the intersection of spirituality and ecology.
Outreach Coordinator
Donghyung Lee (he/him) is a second-year Master of Divinity student at Yale Divinity School. Donghyung is interested in systematic theology, religious ethics, and philosophy of religion, exploring how religion can both mitigate and perpetuate social exploitation in modern society. His research focuses on the relationship between religion and politics, exploitation, racial capitalism, environmental crises, and theodicy. Building on these academic foundations, he critically examines how religious doctrines and traditions can influence broader socio-political realities by confronting or perpetuating structural injustices. By integrating theological reflection with social analysis, Donghyung aims to illuminate the theological and ethical implications of living in a world marked by structural inequities. Donghyung is from Seoul, South Korea, and holds a bachelor’s degree in theology and English, as well as a Master of Theology from Yonsei University. He was awarded the Harriet Jackson Ely Prize for excellence and promise in theology at Yale Divinity School. A fun fact about Donghyung is that he loves the Beatles!
Design Lead
Sophia Špralja (she/her/hers) is the curator for the Graduate Conference in Religion and Ecology after presenting last year at the Conference and displaying her photographs in the exhibition. She is a second-year Masters of Art in Religion student at Yale Divinity School and Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the co-president of the Roman Catholic Fellowship. As a trained art historian, Sophia's research focuses on the tender embrace of delicacy and fragility that illuminates art's temporality in the early modern period/Italian Renaissance. She is drawn to how artists embedded vulnerability and foresight into their practices, acknowledging impermanence not as a limitation but as an essential condition of creation. As a photographer, Sophia interned for Annie Leibovitz where her close contact with Leibovitz’s archive and production processes informed her own photographic body of work in documentary film. Lastly, as a curator, Sophia worked for four years at the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, translating hundreds of restoration reports from Italian to English, which ended up in published catalogues and didactic displays. Her curation aims to make care of both material and meaning the guiding principle of her work. Sophia’s formation as an art historian, photographer, and curator took place at Sarah Lawrence College and Wadham College, University of Oxford. A fun fact about Sophia is that she has a Croatian passport and loves soccer!
Logistics Coordinator
Julia Soule is a dual Masters of Environmental Management and Masters of Arts in Religion student at Yale School of the Environment and Yale Divinity School. She is interested in the ways control over body, land, and culture permeate American agriculture and ecotourism, particularly though Christianity. Julia’s work is grounded in her home state of Arkansas, where she has a background in organic farming and elementary education. When not reading theology or seed catalogs (they are the same thing), she is likely running, gardening, or walking her gargoyle, who is allegedly a dog.
Digital Coordinator
Allison Gilmeister (she/her) is a dual Masters student at Yale School of the Environment and Yale Divinity School. Perusing both a Master of Environmental Management and Master of Arts in Religion, Allison's mission is to help foster movements of ecological justice within Christian communities. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies at Point Loma Nazarene University, where she worked as the Student Sustainability Programs Coordinator, spearheading major campus sustainability initiatives. Allison also works at the Sustainability Office here at Yale, serving as a Graduate Coordinator for undergraduate students in the Peer Education program. When she's not in class, Allison likes to read, hike or spend time with her cat, Addy!
