Kevin Lewis O’Neill is the Dean of Arts and Vice-Provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. He is also professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Science. A cultural anthropologist, O’Neill has written extensively on the politics of Christianity in Guatemala City. His books include City of God (California 2010), Secure the Soul (California 2015), Hunted (Chicago 2019), and the bilingual photography book Art of Captivity / Arte del Cautiverio with Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela (Toronto 2020). An online exhibit for the Art of Captivity can be found here.
A 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, O’Neill now writes about clerical sexual abuse. His first book on the topic is Unforgivable: An Abusive Priest and the Church that Sent Him Abroad(California 2025). The next will be a global history of clerical sexual abuse that begins near the Badlands of New Mexico.
O’Neill teaches a popular first-year course capped at 500 students called “Happiness.” He otherwise divides his time between writing journal articles, directing the Evasion Lab, and editing a book series with the University of California Press called Atelier.
