Westar Institute

Erin Vearncombe is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, with the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy (ISUP) at the University of Toronto Mississauga. After earning her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2014 (Study of Religion/Jewish Studies), Erin held a postdoctoral fellowship with Princeton University from 2014-2019, where she taught in the Princeton Writing Program, the Freshman Seminar Program, and the Freshman Scholars Institute. She returned to the University of Toronto in 2019 to design and lead several undergraduate writing instruction initiatives and innovations, including Arrive Ready to Write. Erin’s teaching focuses on writing support and development for new undergraduates; the transition from high school to university-level writing is challenging, but so exciting!

Erin’s first book, After Jesus Before Christianity (co-authors Hal Taussig and Bernard Brandon Scott)was published by HarperOne in 2021. She has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles on the social scientific criticism of the writings of the early Jesus groups, with a special focus on the realities and functions of dress in the ancient Mediterranean. Her current project examines the writing we now know as the Gospel of Mark - her favorite early Jesus group writing - as a sociocultural object and artifact.

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