FigureDiana Walsh Pasulka

UNC Wilmington professor of religious studies; her academic specialty is the history of Catholic doctrine on Purgatory (subject of her 2014 Oxford University Press monograph Heaven Can Wait). American Cosmic (Oxford, 2019) reframes UAP discourse as a contemporary religious phenomenon. The book follows an anonymous source she calls “Tyler D.,” a scientist she identifies only as senior at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (“Skunk Works”), and a second figure “James” later identified as venture capitalist and AAWSAP-adjacent figure Jacques Vallée. Pasulka is one of the few serious academic humanists with cited working relationships inside the post-2017 disclosure network; she was a consultant on the FX series The X-Files successor projects and has briefed at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.