Paul Christopher Johnson is professor in the Department of History and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, as well as the doctoral program in anthropology and history at the University of Michigan. Working between historical and anthropological modes on issues from secrecy to diaspora to diversely mediated forms of agency, Johnson has done long-term fieldwork in Brazil and Honduras, and shorter-term fieldwork in the Bronx and Paris. He is the author of Secrets, Gossip and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford, 2002); Diaspora Conversions: Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa (California, 2007); Ekklesia: Three Inquiries on Church and State (Chicago, 2018), with Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Pamela E. Klassen; and, most recently, Automatic Religion: Nearhuman Agents of Brazil and France (Chicago, 2021).