Hello, I'm David.

I was born in Colombia and raised between the rhythms of Baptist formation, classical studies, and the unsettled questions that come from growing up in a country shaped by conflict. At sixteen, armed violence displaced my family from the Colombian Amazon. That displacement became a journey through Argentina, Costa Rica, Palestine, Israel, Switzerland, and eventually Canada. I am Colombian by birth, Argentinian by citizenship, and Canadian by adoption. Three countries, three citizenships, that have each, in different ways, shaped how I think, what I study, and the work I do.

Along the way, I studied ancient Greek and Roman culture in Buenos Aires, earned a graduate certificate in ecumenical studies at the University of Geneva, and completed a masters and a doctorate at the University of Toronto. My doctoral research examines how Christian salvation theology and capitalist economic logic co-constructed each other through the colonial encounter. Three consecutive Louisville Institute fellowships funded that work.

Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University

But my academic life has never been separate from my organizational life. For seven years I directed the Latin America programme at Globethics.net, an international ethics NGO, leading research, editing scholarly volumes, and building a regional network of institutions. I co-designed the Global Ecumenical Theological Institute for the World Council of Churches, built intercultural leadership programs for the Canadian Council of Churches, and taught ethics at Emmanuel College, all while writing the dissertation.

The questions I research are the same questions I work through with churches, ecumenical organizations, and NGOs. Academic rigor and practical judgment are not two different modes for me. They are the same mode, developed over decades, across continents.

That is what I bring: not a set of skills assembled from different fields, but a single way of working that has always moved between the seminar room and the planning meeting, and taken both seriously.