Diana Walsh Pasulka

Academic Path and Position

Diana Walsh Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), where she previously served as chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion from 2015 to 2019. She earned her B.A. from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. Her academic lineage bridges both secular and religious intellectual traditions—she was raised in a secular California household with a Jewish mother and Irish Roman Catholic father, and now identifies as a practicing Catholic, giving her a unique perspective on the intersection of faith, technology, and unexplained phenomena.

American Cosmic and the Ethnographic Turn

Pasulka achieved prominence in UFO studies through her 2019 book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology, published by Oxford University Press. Rather than approaching UAP belief as a fringe phenomenon or psychological aberration, Pasulka conducted a rigorous six-year ethnographic study interviewing successful scientists, Fortune 500 professionals, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who maintain serious belief in extraterrestrial intelligence. This methodological choice was deliberate—by studying mainstream, accomplished believers rather than marginalized adherents, Pasulka challenged the prevailing assumption that UFO belief exists primarily at the social periphery.

The book's central thesis frames belief in UFOs and shapeshifting extraterrestrials as an emerging religion offering distinct psychological and spiritual functions: communion with a transcendent intelligence, reassurance of universal interconnectedness, and a compelling explanatory framework for a chaotic world. Rather than debunking or endorsing UAP encounters, Pasulka examines how they function within contemporary American spirituality. The work received substantial mainstream media coverage in Vice, Vox, Fox News, Tank, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Publisher's Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews, and she has been interviewed by The History Channel, Showtime, and major podcasts including Ezra Klein's podcast and Lex Fridman's show.

Bridging Religious Studies and UAP Discourse

Pasulka's scholarly innovation lies in treating UAP encounters with the same analytical rigor typically applied to documented religious experiences. Her work implicitly argues that whether or not extraterrestrial contact is occurring, the experience and belief structure surrounding it merit serious academic attention. She has published additional works including Heaven Can Wait, which examines purgatory's materiality and location in Catholic theology, and the more recent Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences (2024), which deepens her exploration of how humans interpret and integrate encounters with beings perceived as non-human.

Beyond academia, Pasulka has served as a consultant on supernatural and religious themes for films including The Conjuring series, bringing her scholarly expertise into entertainment media. She also collaborates with the Vatican on a translation project focused on the canonization records of Joseph of Copertino, a 17th-century mystic who reportedly experienced levitation and other unexplained phenomena—a project that exemplifies her unique position as a scholar equally at home in both academic and ecclesiastical contexts.

Voice in the Disclosure Era

In the contemporary disclosure movement (2017–present), Pasulka represents a distinctive scholarly voice: rigorous, sympathetic to experiencers, but methodologically grounded in religious studies rather than physical science or government investigation. She neither dismisses UAP reports as delusions nor accepts them uncritically, but instead asks how belief systems form around such experiences and what sociological and spiritual functions they serve. Her emphasis on mainstream believers—not conspiracy theorists or marginal groups—has helped reframe UAP discussion within legitimate academic discourse and popular intellectual circles. As UAP acknowledgment moves from fringe to mainstream, her work documenting how contemporary believers understand non-human intelligence provides an anthropological record of a pivotal cultural moment.