Yara González-Justiniano  is Assistant Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture with emphasis in Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University. 

She received a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Puerto Rico in Audiovisual Communications with a concentration on film, and a master's in divinity and PhD in theological studies at Boston University School of Theology. Her most recent publication Centering Hope as a Sustainable Decolonial Practice: Esperanza en Práctica (2022), restless with answering the question of what does hope look like in the midst of socioeconomic crisis. Her interdisciplinary approach to this inquiry grounds itself in ethnographic research in hopes of finding practices that enable a hope that can sustain the collective.

 Her research interests include Latinx theologies, cultural identity, memory studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, popular culture and film, and popular religion.