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Dr. Raffety smiles into the camera, a woman with shoulder-length straight brown hair. Green foliage is behind her.

Welcome

About Rev. Dr. Raffety

Erin Raffety is a cultural anthropologist, a Presbyterian pastor, and an ethnographic researcher who has studied foster families in China, Christian congregations in the United States, and people with disabilities around the world. Raffety teaches and researches at Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University.

Upcoming Books!

Praise for
From Inclusion to Justice

"...Raffety urges us to move beyond a ‘paradigm of inclusion’ to full empowerment, recognition of and leadership by disabled persons.

This book will go a long way to help us catch up in practice to our best but often ill-informed intentions."

Walter Brueggemann

William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

"This prophetic book offers a paradigm shift in our understanding of persons with disabilities within the life of Christian congregations."

William Storrar

Director, Center of Theological Inquiry

"Essential reading for religious communities ready to grapple with entrenched assumptions."

Julia Watts Belser

Georgetown University

From Inclusion to Justice book cover by Erin Raffety. Includes an illustration of a hand with multi color desgin. When clicked, book cover opens a new page to Baylor Press.

"... [a] forceful, fascinating book which lays bare the violence done in the name of inclusion...

This book offers a stunning example of what an engaged anthropology could look like and where it could lead."

Danilyn Rutherford

President, The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Book cover for Families We Need by Erin Raffety. Image includes a Chinese woman squatting with a little boy in the foreground. When clicked a new page opens to Rutgers Press page.

Praise for
Families We Need 

"Families We Need is a brilliant and warmly empathic book. Written with grace and lucidity, it elevates readers’ understanding of the need for family, and of how neediness can be a source of strength, and even abundance."

Kathie Carpenter

Author of Life in a Cambodian Orphanage

"Raffety’s work provides a rare and precious view on foster care and other kinship practices in mountainous Southwest China, showing us their deep entanglements with forces of urbanization and globalization. It reveals how life-transforming care could emerge where the most vulnerable individuals encounter each other, quietly resisting the deeply-seated biases of ableism, classism, and even imperialism. The book exemplifies the most empathic and humanizing type of ethnography."

Zhiying Ma

 Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago

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