Do you ever feel like your time is being nibbled away – like no matter what you do, how carefully you plan and manage, something is always inexorably eating at the time you thought you had? It’s a familiar feeling for academics, and it’s also part of the inspiration behind one of the most striking pieces of public art in Cambridge – the Corpus Clock, or Chronophage.
I’ve recently got back to the UK after spending a year living in Toronto, Canada, for a postdoctoral research fellowship. This was my first full-time academic role after finishing my DPhil in 2020 – a Mellon Foundation-funded fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, a Catholic research centre dating Read more…
The research postdoc I’ve been carrying out in Toronto this year has enabled me to start a new project – one which has made explaining my work to friends, especially Christian friends, a little more unpredictable. When I was working on my DPhil, I could answer people’s questions at church Read more…
I’m kicking off a new series today which we hope will both alert you to another initiative in the field of Christian academic engagement, and provide us and you with food for thought as we engage with the resources that this initiative – IFES Europe’s Good News for the University – is offering.
I’ve written here before about different stages in my academic career, and the opportunities and challenges each one has brought. I’m now three months in to a postdoc research fellowship, my first full-time academic role after finishing my DPhil in 2020. It’s been a big move in various ways – Read more…
The post two weeks ago by Richard described the inspiration found in C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man for a fresh research direction. As a companion piece, and in the spirit of the upcoming TFN event which seeks to learn from Lewis, I want to reflect on the vocation which Read more…
Today I want to follow up my last post, about how exemplary figures, whether in our lives, in the Bible, or in our fields of study, contribute to our formation – particularly as we live and think in community. Earlier this year, I was asked to fill in on a Read more…
This year I have been thinking often about exemplars – figures in history, or fiction, seen as admirable or exemplary in some way. The main reason for this is that I have been moonlighting as the assistant for an Oxford-based discussion group called Ethics through Fiction and Film, which has Read more…
Easter is mysterious. This isn’t a conclusion many come to in our culture today: from a secular point of view, it constitutes only a pleasant, mostly child-oriented spring festival, while even the Christians who continue to celebrate the religious aspect tend to present it primarily as a celebration in the Read more…
“I will always obey your law, for ever and ever. I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts.” (Psalm 119:44-45) Academic freedom is a frequent talking point in our times – it’s often seen as under threat, whether it’s the government waging a war against Read more…