Mélena (Mae) Laudig is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religion in America subfield. She is also pursuing certificates from the African American Studies Department and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and is currently a Graduate Fellow with the Center for Culture, Society,and Religion. Her dissertation, tentatively titled "'Her Country's Children': African American Religion and Childhood in Slavery and Emancipation," documents the religious histories of Black American children in the antebellum and postbellum United States.
Mélena’s research has been supported by the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton as well as Yale University’s Edward A. Bouchet Fellowship. On campus, she is the Graduate Fellow for the Crossroads Project, a co-host for the African American Studies podcast, and a Diversity Fellow in the Access, Diversity, and Inclusion Office. In 2022, she received her MA in Religion from Princeton University, and she completed a Bachelor of Arts in Religion at Yale University in 2019.