Hans Leaman received his A.B. from Princeton University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. from Yale University’s History Department and Renaissance Studies Program. He comes most recently from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, where he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Ethics, Law & Politics Department. He also taught for two years at Yale University as Postdoctoral Associate in the Integrated Humanities, developing interdisciplinary courses on refugee studies, religion and human rights, and the history of educational thought. Prior to completing his Ph.D., he practiced law with an international firm in Washington, D.C.

Hans is especially interested in the role that religion plays in the community-formation and integration of immigrant groups. He has examined courts’ construal of religious persecution and religious freedom in refugee law and human rights law, and he wrote his dissertation on consolation literature that Reformation-era Lutheran and Anabaptist pastors wrote to encourage their confessional brethren when they faced exile on account of religious non-conformity. As an attorney, he also worked pro bono on behalf of contemporary refugees and asylum-seekers in Washington, D.C. and Connecticut. He grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and is always grateful to return for the fresh produce, hymn sings, and sunsets over the farmland.