Venus Bender is a doctoral candidate at Goethe University Frankfurt, where she earned her B.A. and M.A. in Educational Science and American Studies. During her master’s program, she worked as a teaching assistant in U.S. History and thereafter wrote a thesis on Christian and Black Power analogies in James Cone’s writings. The German Business Foundation (sdw) awarded her a scholarship in 2021 to sponsor her Ph.D. thesis on religious activism and Black intellectual thought in the Black Power movement. She is also part of a research group within the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s funding initiative “Democracy” since 2022. Her research interests include Modern U.S. History, Histories of Race, Cultural History, and Black Theology.