Dr. Ott earned her Ph.D. at Fordham University, where she studied theological and social ethics and also taught for several years. Her dissertation focused on the role of conflict in Catholic social teaching and theological ethics, and an updated version
was published with Routledge in 2024 as Conflict and Catholic Social Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Approach.
Prior to coming to SBU, Dr. Ott worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium, where she was part of a project called “Dissenting Church.”