Our Team

Founder and Lead

Nicole Malte Collins (she/her, nicole@lgbtqreligiousarchives.org) is a PhD student at Brown University, where she studies trans converts to Judaism in the contemporary United States. She started and helps run LGBTQ RAN’s Queer Religion Boston research project. She holds an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a BA from Carleton College.

Researchers (Summer 2026)

Dalya Lessem Elnecave is an incoming senior at Brandeis University studying Politics. They are a researcher, writer, and community organizer interested in the intersections of queerness, Judaism, and social justice. Previously they have appeared on the Beyond The Pale podcast, and their work has been featured in New Voices magazine and the JPTSS.

Peter Goswami is a student of the Class of 2027 at Brandeis University, double majoring in biology and philosophy, with minors in religious studies and South Asian Studies. He is mainly interested in the issues of gender and sexuality in Hinduism, with particular focus on the intersection of gender and caste, sexuality in the vernacular literatures of Hinduism, devotional songs as a medium of resistance to normative ideas of caste and gender, and the philosophy of gender in early Hindu law. They recently completed an assistantship for a project analyzing gender and caste dynamics in the festival of Kodungallur Bharani and are currently working on a project analyzing the character of Radha as model for femininity in Bengali Hindu devotional music. Peter personally identifies as gay, genderqueer, Bengali, Hindu, and a proud New Yorker. Outside of academics, they are the community coordinator for the Brandeis Asian American Students Association and participate in dance as well as theater, including directing a production of Rabindranath Tagore’s Chitra in Fall 2025.