Margarita Mooney Clayton

Margarita Mooney Clayton is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall and an Associate Member of Las Casas Institute. Her current work focuses on Marian pilgrimages and other forms of Marian devotion which embody the Christian mysteries and the theological virtues. During her time at Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars Hall, she started an ecumenical fellowship and discussion group to focus on the dynamic interaction between Marian doctrine and devotion in Christian life.

Margarita is an Associate Professor in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, where she teaches on topics such as philosophy of social science, religion and immigration, ecumenical devotion to Mary, and aesthetics and Christian education. She read psychology at Yale university and gained her PhD in sociology at Princeton University. In 2016 she founded The Scala Foundation whose vision is to restore meaning and purpose to culture by focusing on the arts, liberal arts education and liturgy.

Select Publications: The Wounds of Beauty: Seven Dialogues on Art and Education (2022), The Love of Learning: Seven Dialogues on the Liberal Arts (2021), and Faith Makes Us Live Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora (2009). Her articles have appeared in scholarly journals and publications that reach outside the academy such as Church Life Journal, Plough Magazine, Comment Magazine, America Magazine, Public Discourse, First Things, Hedgehog Review, and Scientific American.