Alison M. Benders, J.D., Ph.D., serves as Associate Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. Alison earned her B.A. in Philosophy at Yale University, her J.D. at the University of Virginia, and her Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston College. In addition to administrative responsibilities, she teaches theological anthropology, emphasizing an intersectional exploration of human beings as enmeshed in society and culture.  Her research focuses on questions of racial privilege and social oppression.  Her prayer book, Just Prayer: A Liturgy of Hours for Peacemakers and Justice Seekers (Liturgical Press), received the 2016 Catholic Publishers Best Book Award for Spirituality.   Her most recent article, “Reconstructing the Moral Claim of Racially Unjust Mass Incarceration” was included in the edited collection Today I Gave Myself Permission to Dream: Race and Incarceration in America (Lane Center), University of San Francisco Press, 2018.