Lisa Sowle Cahill's Headshot

Lisa Sowle Cahill

- Panelist Blurb

Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of theology at Boston College since 1976, brings a broad range of expertise and interests to bear on her current research focused on genetics and social ethics, including cloning, stem cell research and the international development and marketing of genomics-based tests and therapies. Cahill, a prolific writer and ethicist, has diverse special interests in fundamental theological ethics, use of Scripture in ethics, ethics of sex and gender, bioethics, just war theory and pacifism and the history of Christian ethics.

Cahill's most recent book is Bioethics and the Common Good (2004). She is currently writing Bioethics, Theology, and Society and editing Genetics, Theology, Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Conversation as well as a volume of papers on sexual ethics. She has authored six additional books, edited two others and has authored over 150 essays in books and journals. She has served as an editor or on the editorial boards of a wide range of professional journals focusing on religious ethics, theology, medicine and philosophy, law and religion, sexuality, war and more.

Cahill is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on the March of Dimes National Bioethics Advisory Commission. She has held office in the American Academy of Religion and has given testimony to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission on fetal tissue research and cloning. Cahill is past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, a member of the Catholic Health Association Theology and Ethics Advisory Committee and the National Advisory Board for Ethics in Reproduction. For five years she convened an international study group on genetics, theology and social ethics at Boston College.

Cahill received her BA in Theology from Santa Clara University and her MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University and a Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Yale.

NOTE: Bio is as it appeared in the Forum program from December 3, 2004.