Emilie Maureen Townes (born August 1, 1955, Durham, North Carolina) is an American Christian social ethicist and theologian.
She was Dean, E. Rhodes, and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School.
She then earned her Master of Arts in Religion as well as her Doctor of Ministry from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1979 and 1982.
In 2022 Townes announced that she will conclude her deanship at Vanderbilt Divinity School at the end of the 2022–2023 academic year.
[6] Her research interests include health, interlocking forms of oppression, womanism, cultural studies, and postmodernism.