Diana Walsh Pasulka (Diana Heath)

UNCW's current faculty profile lists her as Dr. Diana Heath (formerly Walsh Pasulka) and describes her as a scholar of religion, technology and culture in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. [S1]

Her earlier books and the majority of public UAP literature identify her as Diana Walsh Pasulka or D. W. Pasulka.

Her earlier publications and much of the public discussion use the name Diana Walsh Pasulka. The name change should not be treated as a separate scholarly identity.

Pasulka's academic work predates her UAP research. Her broader scholarship includes Catholic history, purgatory, supernatural narratives, religious media and the development of belief through material culture and technology. [S1][S4] Religious studies, as practised in universities, is not normally an exercise in determining whether a religious claim is metaphysically true. It examines texts, institutions, practices, experiences and historical development.

Pasulka has repeatedly described a comparable posture toward UFO/UAP material. In a 2026 UNCW account of her research, she said her approach was from a perspective of non-belief or disciplinary neutrality rather than advocacy that audiences should believe in UFOs. [S5] That methodological stance is important even though her later books sometimes use stronger language concerning "nonhuman intelligences". The empirical subject of religious studies is often the human interpretation of the experience.

UNCW states that Pasulka began a comparative study around 2012 after noticing parallels between historical representations of angels or souls and modern UFO imagery. [S5] Her project developed into a cross-cultural and transhistorical examination of how extraordinary phenomena are described and understood. This does not mean that medieval angel accounts and modern UAP reports are physically the same phenomenon. The comparison concerns form, interpretation and cultural function.

Similar imagery across time can result from many mechanisms:

• recurrent human perceptual patterns;
• inherited symbolic traditions;
• direct cultural transmission;
• common narrative structures;
• or, more speculatively, a common external stimulus. Religious-studies comparison can identify the resemblance. It cannot by itself determine which causal mechanism produced it.

Oxford University Press published American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology in 2019. [S2] The book grew from approximately six years of ethnographic work involving scientists, professionals and technology-sector participants who held strong beliefs or interests concerning extraterrestrial intelligence and UFOs. Its central contribution is to challenge the assumption that UFO belief belongs only to marginal or anti-scientific communities. Pasulka documented highly educated participants who integrated scientific, technological and religious categories in unexpected ways.

The book also argues that media and technology play a major role in constructing modern UFO belief. Film, television and digital imagery provide symbolic repertoires through which people interpret unusual experiences. This matters because later recollection can be shaped by cultural templates even when the initiating experience was sincere.

One of the main risks in reading American Cosmic is to mistake ethnographic access for independent confirmation of physical claims. Pasulka describes scientists and technology professionals who believe extraordinary things. The social fact that a credentialled person holds a belief is relevant to the sociology of knowledge. It is not independent physical evidence that the belief is correct.

Similarly, an ethnographer may be taken to locations, shown materials or hear claims from sources who request anonymity. These experiences can be important to the ethnographic narrative while remaining difficult for outside researchers to verify. A reader should distinguish:

• what Pasulka observed people saying or doing;
• what materials she personally reports seeing;
• what can be independently documented;
• the physical interpretation assigned to those observations.

American Cosmic uses pseudonyms for some participants. This is common in ethnographic research where source protection is part of the methodology. It also limits independent verification. Readers cannot always compare the person's account with public career records, contemporaneous documents or other testimony.

Later public discussion has attempted to identify some individuals behind pseudonyms. An internet identification remains unconfirmed unless the individual or Pasulka has publicly established it. Anonymity is not evidence of unreliability. It is a limitation on external source checking.

Pasulka's strongest scholarly contribution is the analysis of how technological media can take on religious functions. UFO narratives often contain:

• revelation;
• hidden knowledge;
• chosen insiders;
• conversion experiences;
• apocalyptic expectations;
• sacred locations;
• authoritative texts or images;
• promises of transformation. Digital media can intensify these dynamics by reproducing images rapidly and creating communities organised around interpretation of ambiguous evidence. This framework does not reduce every UAP report to religion.

A radar contact does not become imaginary because people later construct a belief system around it. The point is that the social life of evidence can become partly independent of the original event. That is highly relevant to long-running cases such as Roswell, where documentation, witness memory, folklore and cultural expectation interact over decades.

St. Martin's Essentials published Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences in 2023. [S3][S6]

The book broadens Pasulka's earlier focus beyond UFO belief to a wider category of "nonhuman intelligences", including artificial intelligence, religious entities, anomalous experiences, dreams and other reported forms of encounter. That broader category is analytically provocative but brings together very different kinds of material. Artificial intelligence is demonstrably real. A reported angelic encounter, UFO encounter and dream are different types of evidence.

Placing them in one interpretive frame may reveal similarities in human meaning-making, but it does not establish one common physical source. The phrase "nonhuman intelligence" in Encounters does not establish that all the experiences discussed involve verified external beings.

Religious studies has a legitimate reason to take unusual experiences seriously. A researcher can study an experience's effects, structure and cultural interpretation without deciding whether the event occurred exactly as the participant believes. This is particularly important for UAP experiencer narratives. A witness may undergo a profound life change after an event that remains physically unresolved.

The psychological and cultural consequences are real even if the object's physical identity cannot be established. Pasulka's work helps preserve this distinction. It avoids the false choice that researchers must either endorse an extraordinary interpretation or dismiss the experience as meaningless.

Pasulka's work has brought her into contact with figures in aerospace, technology, science and UAP research. UNCW describes her as collaborating with experts in aerospace and technology to investigate connections among metaphysical theories, scientific paradigms and cultural change. [S1] Her books and public discussions include interactions with or references to researchers such as Jacques Vallée and others working across UAP, technology and consciousness. These associations can produce authority effects.

A scholar interviewing a scientist does not inherit the scientist's technical authority. A scientist participating in ethnography does not make the resulting cultural interpretation a physics finding. The authority of each contribution depends on the relevant disciplinary methods and evidence.

One of the most discussed elements of American Cosmic concerns a trip to a site where participants reportedly searched for material associated with an alleged anomalous event. This part of Pasulka's narrative has generated substantial online speculation about the identity of participants and the material itself. The distinction is straightforward. A report that unusual material was found is not the same as a published materials analysis establishing non-terrestrial origin.

Where sample provenance, chain of custody and laboratory results are incomplete or anonymised, strong claims about physical origin should remain unconfirmed. Pasulka's importance in this episode is as an ethnographic participant and recorder of the group's beliefs and practices.

Pasulka has become a highly visible public commentator through books, interviews, university events and major podcasts. Her public reach has helped make religious-studies approaches to UAP more familiar to audiences that previously understood the subject primarily through military, scientific or conspiracy frameworks. This has value. It also creates a potential feedback loop.

A scholar studies the development of UFO culture and then becomes a prominent participant in that culture. Future research should therefore remain reflective about how researcher visibility influences the communities being studied. This is a normal issue in ethnography rather than a unique criticism of Pasulka.