Mark Gonnerman, founding director of the Aurora Forum, earned his BA degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in history and philosophy from the Paracollege of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, the town where he grew up. In the course of his undergraduate years he traveled and studied in Egypt, India, Taiwan, and Japan, and spent the better part of his junior year reading history and poetry at Christ's College at Cambridge University, England. After three years of peace education work in Hiroshima, Japan, he returned stateside to complete an MDiv degree at Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in religious studies at Stanford, where he was a Lieberman Fellow. He was a teaching fellow in Japanese history at Harvard, and is a lecturer in religious studies at Stanford. You can get to know him through his notes on this website.