Jenn Lindsay (born October 18, 1978, in Amarillo) is an American social scientist, adjunct professor of sociology and communications, documentary filmmaker, video journalist, and singer-songwriter based in Rome, Italy.
She lived in New York City from 2001 to 2011, in Boston from 2011–2014, and in 2014 moved to Rome to work at Confronti magazine and conduct doctoral research on interfaith dialogue in Italy and the Middle East.
She worked as an assistant editor with Zak Tucker on The Garden (Harbor Picture), previously known as Body & Soul by Swede Films.
Lindsay uses documentary film techniques to explore and explain the institute's research projects, and the dialogues between religion and science.
In 2020, Lindsay produced the award-winning documentary film Quarantined Faith about the suspension of religious gatherings in Rome due to the COVID-19 national lockdown in Italy during Passover, Easter, and Ramadan.
As of 2022, Jenn Lindsay is in production with The Modeling Religion Project, Minding Shadows and ShalOM, and in post-production with the documentary Simulating Religious Violence.
[4] Jenn Lindsay completed her PhD in Religion and Society at Boston University in 2018, advised by sociologist Nancy Ammerman.
Her website reports that Jenn Lindsay "uses her research and films to encourage reflection about religion 'outside the box,' fostering interreligious collaboration and healthier human exchanges, and educating individuals and religious leaders about the realities and demands of 'street-level pluralism' in increasingly diverse communities.
[11]" Lindsay began her career as an investigative fieldworker in 1998 in the Peruvian highlands, where she wrote about Andean woman's rural lives and their use of religious symbols and rituals.
This fieldwork explored the field of ethnoastronomy with indigenous communities in Northern Peru, charting how locals combine Pachamama spirit imagery with imported Catholic images to interpret celestial phenomena such as constellations, eclipses, and weather patterns.
Between 2010 and 2014, Jenn Lindsay was a member of the planning committee for the International Political Camp at Agape Centro Ecumenico, an ecumenical center in Northern Italy with roots in post-WWII peace movement.
For her PhD dissertation fieldwork, revolving around interfaith dialogue activity in the city of Rome, in 2014 and 2015 Lindsay was based at the Roman intercultural magazine Confronti, travelling for press tours in partnership with Holy Land Trust throughout Palestine and Israel.
[14] In 2015 she wrote for the magazine Confronti, and that same year started publishing peer-reviewed journal articles on topics spanning interreligious dialogue, intercultural competence, and documentary filmmaking.
She has shared the stage with Regina Spektor, Jeffrey Lewis, Kimya Dawson, Alix Olson, Chris Barron, Erin McKeown, Lach, Girlyman and Toshi Reagon, primarily through her association with the anti-folk music scene based in the East Village of New York City.
At Grossmont High School Jenn Lindsay sang in the Red Robe Choir under Edwin Basilio, and she played in a folk band with her calculus teacher Robert Ridgway, covering artists such as Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, the Indigo Girls, and the Beatles.
"[17] One of the hallmarks of Jenn Lindsay's work is the grassroots, low-fi set up of Olive Juice Studios, where the drum kit rests on a bedspread, the microphone pop filter is a sock stretched over a coat hanger, and percussion sounds include apples and a pen dragged over the wire of a spiral notebook.
To keep costs down on her albums Uphill Both Ways, Perfect Handful and A For Effort, Jenn Lindsay learned to play as many instruments as she could: the guitar, piano, banjo, baritone ukulele, mandolin, drums, keyboard, xylophone, the Vietnamese dan mo, the marxophone, harmonica and tambourine.
White Room is on the SBS Records #9 Sampler, a compilation put out by musicians Michele Malone and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, released nationally in September 2005.
In 2015 Confronti Magazine used her song The Bird from the album Allora Eccola in their short video about a demolished Palestinian home outside Bethlehem.