Our People
Lynnea Myers
Lynnea H. Myers, PhD, PhD MSN, RN is a dual PhD-trained nurse and researcher specializing in pediatrics, child development, asthma, and digital health. She currently serves as the faculty mentor for the Gustavus team for the Innovation Scholars Program. She most recently worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and a Visiting Research Fellow at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Prior to those roles, she was an Associate Professor of Nursing at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research interests focus on leveraging artificial intelligence and remote monitoring devices to improve pediatric asthma management.
Our People
Maddalena Marinari
Maddalena Marinari is a Professor of History and the Dorothy Peterson, Mildred Peterson Hanson, and Arthur Jennings Hanson Endowed Professor of Liberal Studies. She is the author of Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965 (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) and of several articles on immigration restriction, U.S. immigration policy, and immigrant mobilization in the Journal of American History, Journal of Policy History, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and Social Science History Journal. She has also co-edited four volumes on different aspects of US immigration history in the twentieth century, a special issue of the Journal of American History on the centennials of the immigration restriction acts of the 1920s, and a special issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History on migration and citizenship. Her next book explores the history of family, marriage, and sexuality in U.S. immigration policy from 1875 to 2025. She is also one of the scholars who created the Immigration Syllabus, an online tool for anyone interested in understanding the history behind current debates on immigration, and of Immigrants in COVID America, a curated collection of resources that chronicles the impact of the pandemic on migrant and refugee communities in the United States. Professor Marinari is currently president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and Editor in Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Migration Studies. She has received funding from the American Philosophical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Immigration History Research Center, the Social Science Research Council, and the American Society for Legal History for her research and her public projects.
At Gustavus, she teaches a broad range of courses in U.S. history since 1865 and is an active member of the community. Her service to the College includes her tenure on the Faculty Senate and the Personnel Committee as well as her roles as the Kendall Center Associate for Faculty, Research, and Scholarship and as the Kendall Center Associate for Excellence in Teaching. In 2023, she received the Gustavus Faculty Service Award for her work on the Faculty Task Force. In 2021, Gustavus Adolphus College awarded her the Gustavus Faculty Scholarly Accomplishment Award in recognition of her scholarship accomplishments.
Our People
Marcia Bunge
Marcia J. Bunge, PhD, is Professor of Religion and holds the Drell and Adeline Bernhardson Distinguished Endowed Chair of Lutheran Studies. Bunge earned her BA in Music and English from St. Olaf College (Phi Beta Kappa) and her MA and PhD.in Theology from the University of Chicago. She also studied at the University of Tübingen and conducted research in Germany as a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow. Before coming to Gustavus in 2013, she was Professor of Humanities and Theology at the Honors College of Valparaiso University. Since 2014, she has served as an Extraordinary Research Professor at North-West University in South Africa.
Bunge’s teaching and scholarship have addressed issues in theology, social and environmental ethics, women’s studies, childhood studies, and inter-religious studies. A central focus of her scholarship is conceptions of and commitments to children in diverse religious traditions. She has published numerous articles and six books on the subject, including The Child in Christian Thought (Eerdmans, 2001) and Children, Adults, and Shared Responsibilities: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2012). From 2013–2017, she served as a core collaborator in the interdisciplinary “European Childhoods” project at the University of Oslo and co-edited one of its volumes, Nordic Childhoods 1750–1960: From Folk Beliefs to Pippi Longstocking (Routledge, 2018).
Related to her scholarship on children, Bunge has also written extensively on moral and spiritual formation and Lutheran perspectives on education and vocation. She is co-editor of So that All May Flourish: The Aims of Lutheran Higher Education (Fortress, 2023), translator of selected writings by the German theologian and educator Johann Gottfried Herder, and co-founder of the Gustavus Academy for Faith, Science, and Ethics. From 2023–2025, she contributed to the “Character Development, Ethical Education, and Value Transmission” project co-hosted by Emory University and Heidelberg University.
Drawing on her areas of expertise, Bunge has contributed to academic and advocacy initiatives around the world and secured more than $4.5 million in research, institutional, and civic engagement grants. She lectures widely, has served on international editorial boards and academic committees, and co-founded the Childhood Studies and Religion Program Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Her advocacy work includes child-focused projects, such as Georgetown University’s “Collaborative on Global Children's Issues,” and justice-related initiatives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the World Council of Churches, and faith-based organizations. As a Lutheran theologian and holder of the Bernhardson Chair, she also cultivates relationships between Gustavus and other ELCA-affiliated institutions in the United States and abroad.
Bunge’s collaborations have connected her with colleagues and initiatives across six continents and reflect her enduring commitments to interdisciplinary inquiry, inter-religious engagement, and the flourishing of people and the planet.