The Rev. Dr. Daisy L. Machado is a native of Cuba who came to the U.S. with her parents to NYC when she was three years old. She completed a BA from Brooklyn College, a Masters in Social Work from Hunter School of Social Work, a Masters of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the first Latina ordained in the NE Region (1981), Rev. Dr. Machado has served Latinx congregations in Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City as well as Gary, Indiana. She also helped to establish two new Latinx congregations, one in Houston and one in Fort Worth, Texas.

Dr. Machado, an historian of the History of Christianity with a focus on the modern period in the U.S. and the Americas, has been teaching for over twenty-five years. From 2007-2022, she was Professor of the History of Christianity at Union Theological Seminary in NYC where in May 2022 she became Professor Emerita. She has also served as academic dean of Lexington Theological Seminary, Lexington, KY and Union Theological Seminary in NYC, the first Latina to serve as dean in both institutions. She has also provided leadership to major Latinx organizations of theological education serving as the founding director of the Hispanic Theological Initiative created in 1996 to expand the presence and work of Latinx scholars in the academy by mentoring and supporting Latinx doctoral students. And currently she is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Summer Program, the first Latina to hold this position, which is now in its 34th year of service. The HSP provides programs of theological education for Latinx seminarians from across the U.S.

Dr. Machado is the author of numerous book chapters and has been invited to speak at academic conferences throughout the U.S. and in Germany. Most recently, she is coeditor of an anthology on borderland religion that collects the work of scholars from South Africa, Norway, Austria, Denmark, and the U.S. titled Borderland Religion: Ambiguous practices of difference, hope and beyond (Routledge Press, 2019). She has also written “History and Latino Identity: Mapping A Past That Leads to Our Future” in the anthology Companion to Latina/o Theology, edited by Orlando Espín (2nd edition, forthcoming). Dr. Machado has also provided leadership for various groups at the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion and in 2020 received a grant to work with four other Latinx colleagues on series of workshops that focused on teaching in seminaries from a Latinx perspective called “Teaching Borderlands”. Dr. Machado was also invited to give the 2022 American Academy of Religion’s American Lectureship in the History of Religion on the topic of “Borderlands”. In the fall 2022 she spoke at Loyola Marymount University, the University of Southern California, UC Riverside, and gave the final lecture at the annual AAR Meeting in November 2022.