Profiles

As a leading postcolonial scholar in homiletics, HyeRan Kim-Cragg is committed to an interdisciplinary approach to homiletics in practical theology. Her teaching and research address topics related to biblical interpretation, postcolonial theories, feminist homiletics and liturgy, migration, and decolonizing practices. Her current research focuses on connecting the ecological crisis with preaching.

Before she returned to Emmanuel College at Victoria University (Toronto), her alma mater, to be appointed the inaugural Timothy Eaton Memorial Church Professor of Preaching in 2019, she held the Lydia Gruchy Professorship at St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon, for more than ten years. Kim-Cragg began her teaching career at Hanshin University, Korea, in 2005, a few months after submitting her doctoral dissertation. She taught there from 2005 to 2008 as overseas mission staff of the United Church of Canada.

Kim-Cragg was appointed the fourteenth principal of Emmanuel College in 2022. She is the first racialized person to lead the institution as principal and to be promoted to full professor in the school’s history. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2020 for her notable contributions to intercultural ministry, antiracism, and postcolonial scholarship.

She has served the United Church of Canada for more than twenty-five years. A recipient of numerous scholarships, including the McGeachy Senior, Emma Kaufman, and Rowntree scholarships, Kim-Cragg is an active researcher and prolific writer. She has published fifteen books and written more than fifty articles. Her groundbreaking monographs include Interdependence (2018) and Postcolonial Preaching (2021). Her most recent publication, Moments in Time (2024), is a collection of sermons from the United Church of Canada from 1910–2020 with historical analysis.