Dr. Wylin D. Wilson

Dr. Wylin D. Wilson is a nationally respected scholar, author, theologian, and bioethicist whose groundbreaking work challenges us to reconsider what it truly means to care for one another—particularly Black women whose voices, experiences, and health concerns have too often been overlooked. An Associate Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School, Dr. Wilson works at the powerful intersection of religion, gender, bioethics, Black Church studies, rural health, spirituality, and social justice. Her scholarship asks difficult but essential questions about whose experiences are valued within healthcare, whose pain is believed, and how our institutions and communities can create environments in which every person has the opportunity not merely to survive, but to flourish. She is the author of the acclaimed Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women’s Health, a groundbreaking work that centers Black women’s lived experiences in conversations about healthcare ethics and calls upon hospitals, churches, healthcare professionals, and communities to rethink how they respond to the health and wellbeing of Black women. Published by NYU Press in 2025, the book was named a finalist for the 2025 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Health. Dr. Wilson’s remarkable academic journey reflects the interdisciplinary nature of her work. She earned a B.S. in Agricultural Business from Florida A&M University, an M.S. in Agricultural, Resource, and Managerial Economics from Cornell University, a Master of Divinity from the Interdenominational Theological Center, and a Ph.D. in Religious Social Ethics from Emory University. Before joining Duke, she served on the teaching faculty of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, was a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, and previously served as Associate Director of Education at the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. Her professional journey has allowed her to bridge worlds that are too often separated—medicine and faith, scholarship and community, ethics and lived experience. Her commitment to care also extends beyond the classroom. As a trained death doula, Dr. Wilson has explored the profound importance of presence, listening, grief, and accompanying people through some of life's most difficult moments—work she has connected to longstanding traditions of care within the Black Church. At the heart of Dr. Wilson’s work is a powerful challenge: What would our healthcare systems, churches, families, and communities look like if Black women were not simply included in conversations about wellbeing—but genuinely heard, believed, protected, and centered? Through her scholarship, teaching, writing, and advocacy, Dr. Wylin D. Wilson is helping build a new vision of care—one rooted in dignity, justice, spirituality, community, and the belief that Black women deserve far more than survival. They deserve the opportunity to be well, whole, and to flourish.