Diana Walsh Pasulka — biographical reference
Condensed 2026-05-29 from Wikipedia and her own interviews. Reference for pasulka-ufo-religion-scholar.
Diana Walsh Pasulka — American religious-studies scholar. PhD Syracuse University; MA Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley); BA UC Davis. Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington; chaired its Department of Philosophy and Religion (2015–2019). Specialist in Catholic history (her earlier book Heaven Can Wait, 2014, is on purgatory).
UFO work
- American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology (Oxford University Press, 2019) — a ~6-year ethnographic study arguing that belief in UFOs/ET functions as a new, decentralized form of religion, and that technology has become a locus of the sacred. She came to the topic through Catholic chronicles of aerial phenomena and “beings of light.” A central, controversial feature is her reliance on anonymous scientists/technologists (pseudonyms — “the Invisibles,” “Tyler D,” “James”) who she says work on advanced technology and are linked to the phenomenon.
- Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences (2023) — widely read as moving from detached analysis toward taking experiencer/NHI accounts more at face value.
- A figure in the Sol Foundation academic-UAP milieu; consulted on the film Nope.
The scholar-vs-participant tension
Her stated method is detached: an “empirical observer documenting religious phenomena rather than adjudicating truth claims.” But she narrates her own crossing of that line — having set out to treat the crash-retrieval/reverse-engineering material as “the modern myth,” she says she found that “this myth is actually real… I didn’t quite know how to articulate that.” Critics note the anonymity of her key sources makes her central empirical claims unverifiable, and that her later work blurs scholar and believer.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Walsh_Pasulka; American Cosmic (OUP 2019); her launch and Shuddhashar interviews.