Erin Prophet is a scholar of religion with interests in alternative spirituality and medicine. She has a master’s degree in public health (epidemiology concentration) from Boston University and received her PhD from Rice University in May 2018. Her master's practicum looked at characteristics of long-term survival in non-small cell lung cancer. Her dissertation examines the nineteenth-century appropriation of “evolution” as a form of personal improvement and self-transcendence. It is entitled “Evolution Esotericized: Conceptual Blending and the Emergence of Secular, Therapeutic Salvation.”