In 2024, Marla F. Frederick became the inaugural Senior Scholar at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University. She is a leading ethnographer of the African American religious experience and Dean of Harvard Divinity School, a position she assumed on January 1, 2024. Her interdisciplinary scholarship explores how religion, race, media, and politics shape everyday life, with particular attention to Black religious communities, social activism in the U.S. South, and the global circulation of American religion.

Before becoming dean, Frederick served as the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology (2019–2023). She previously spent more than a decade on the faculty at Harvard University, where she held a joint appointment in African and African American Studies and the Committee on the Study of Religion. During her time at Harvard, she also held several leadership roles, including interim chair of the Committee on the Study of Religion and director of graduate studies in African and African American Studies.

Frederick is the author or co-author of four books, including Colored Television: American Religion Gone Global and Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith. She served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2021 and has also led the Association of Black Anthropologists.