Profiles

Dr. Mona Tokarek LaFosse holds a joint appointment at Emmanuel and Victoria colleges of Victoria University (Toronto), teaching across undergraduate, basic-degree and graduate levels. Trained in religious studies, her primary area of research and teaching is the New Testament and early Christian history, which she approaches through interdisciplinary lenses including cultural anthropology, storytelling, and occasionally zombies.

She has previously taught at Martin Luther University College, Wilfrid Laurier University, Huron University College and, as a doctoral student, in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her passion for biblical studies was sparked when she first learned New Testament Greek. Around the same time, she became interested in cultural anthropology as a way to honor the diversity of cultural perspectives through which people see and experience the world.

LaFosse’s teaching and research reflect these intersecting interests. She seeks to understand early Christ followers within their own cultural and social settings while also engaging critically with the various lenses modern readers bring to the text. More recently, her work has focused on the power of stories and storytelling—both ancient and modern—as tools for making meaning and building relationships.

Her current research explores age, aging, and age structure in early Christian communities of the late first and early second centuries in the ancient Mediterranean. Her study of 1 Timothy examines intergenerational relationships and the role of the life course in shaping social dynamics between women and men.

She is also deeply interested in the oral aspects of storytelling among early Christ groups, with particular attention to the gospel of Mark, Revelation, and the Shepherd of Hermas. In the classroom, she emphasizes “embodied story”—performing and experiencing stories together, in person—influenced by Indigenous storytelling practices and the work of contemporary storytellers.