Professor Kathryn McClymond is Chair and Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Georgia State University, where she has taught since 1999. Professor McClymond graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in History and Literature and later pursued her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her focus was on comparative ritual studies, with an emphasis on Hindu and Jewish traditions.

Professor McClymond has published widely on religion and ritual, focusing on sacrifice and violence. She also has been involved in collaborative research that emphasizes the importance of story and narrative in individual lives. Current projects include developing an oral history archive of the religious life stories of residents of Atlanta, Georgia, and an interdisciplinary program that encourages military personnel and veterans to integrate morally traumatic experiences into their own moral and ethical life stories.

Professor McClymond is the recipient of the Georgia State University College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award (2006) and the Georgia State University Distinguished Honors Professor Award (2002). In 2013, she was elected to the American Society for the Study of Religion. She also has been a member of the Board of Regents for the University of California.

Professor McClymond is the author of Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Sacrifice and the forthcoming Ritual Gone Wrong: What We Learn from Ritual Disruption, as well as numerous academic articles.