Trish Zimmerman received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School and BA from Gustavus Adolphus College, including work at the University of Heidelberg. Her research and teaching focus on the history of Christianity with particular emphasis on the diversities of Christian thought and practice; feminist theology; theology of food; and comparative mysticism.  She co-teaches in the Environmental Conversation and has taught for many years in Enduring Questions/Great Conversation.  Her current research project focuses on a mysticism of place. See her Killeen Lecture for St Norbert College for prairie notes. She is in the early stages of her book A Mysticism of Place. Minnesota Biomes as Holy Encounter.

Preaching and teaching regularly in various denominational churches, she is an advocate for the public understanding, discussion, and debate of all things religious. She has served on the Council of the American Society of Church History and as a senior fellow for the Ford Foundation Difficult Dialogues project, as co-chair of the Steering Committee of the History of Christianity group for the American Academy of Religion and serves as North American series editor for Routledge's Contemporary Theological Explorations in Christian Mysticism. She enjoys leading continuing education (CLE) for lawyers and businesses on religious literacy.

Some publications include: "The Gendered Impact of Covid: Or "How to Covid, Like a Girl" in the Journal of Lutheran Ethics (April 2021), Reviews for The Christian Century, "Lives and Visions" Oxford Handbook to Mystical Theology (2020); "The Mystic Traveler in a Global Spiritual Age" in Teaching Interreligious Encounters Eds. Marc Pugliese and Alexander Hwang (Oxford, 2017); Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (2012); “The Power of Books and the Practice of Mysticism in the Fourteenth Century: Heinrich of Nördlingen and Margaret Ebner with Mechthild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead” Church History. Studies in Christianity and Culture (March 2007);”Swimming in the Trinity. Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Mystical Play” Spiritus. A Journal of Christian Spirituality (Spring 2004).