Deirdre de la Cruz is Director of the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History, and Associate Professor of History and Asian Languages and Cultures, at the University of Michigan. A cultural anthropologist by training, she is the author of the book Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and several articles on religion in the Philippines. Her current projects include a scholarly book on the history of faith healing in the Philippines, an edited volume on religious diversity in the Philippines, and two plays, one on the legacies of Filipinos who fought in WWII, and another that tells the history of Christianity through the eyes of its apostates.