Andy Hall (he/him) is a Ph.D. student in Theological Ethics at Boston College. He earned his B.A. at the University of Arizona, designing an interdisciplinary major around the issue of human trafficking. He co-founded the nonprofit Southern Arizona Against Slavery. He then returned to the University of Arizona for law school, earning his J.D. with a Certificate in Criminal Law and Policy. He worked as a lawyer for six years in the public and private sectors, primarily in the area of immigration law.

He then attended Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS), where he earned his Master of Divinity and Master of Arts in Christian Education and Formation, with concentrations in Reformed Theology; Public Theology; and Theology, Women, and Gender. At PTS, Andy was awarded the Senior Fellowship in Theology, which is given annually to the student who the faculty believes has submitted the best master’s thesis in that field.

Andy’s research focuses on Christian ethical thought as it pertains to issues of immigration, immigration law, borders, and refugee protection. Influenced by the phenomenological-ethical accounts of thinkers like Emmanuel Lévinas and Judith Butler, he is interested in the extent to which such an alterity–and process-based phenomenology–might also extend to conceptualizations of a demos as a national or popular “self,” and what that might imply about the contours of an ethical immigration policy.

Andy asks whether states purported sovereign right to exclude non citizens–and to impose coercive border controls toward that end–is justifiable, and to what degree such purported right can be constrained by customary international law, treaties like the U.N. Refugee Convention, domestic constitutional law, human rights principles, and democratic norms.

Andy’s other research interests include theological anthropology, political theology, Biblical studies, American jurisprudence, and international relations. Andy is an ordained deacon and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and is also certified ready to receive a call as a minister of Word and Sacrament in that denomination. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar.