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Alicia Smith

Alicia has been blogging for Faith in Scholarship since 2016. She completed a doctorate on the prayer practices of medieval solitary recluses in 2020 and is now a lecturer in Medieval Literature and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London.
Faith-in-Scholarship

Learning by example?

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…

By Alicia Smith, 3 yearsJune 14, 2022 ago
Faith-in-Scholarship

Swallowed up by life

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…

By Alicia Smith, 3 yearsApril 18, 2022 ago
Faith-in-Scholarship

Walking in freedom

“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…

By Alicia Smith, 4 yearsOctober 25, 2021 ago
Keep Calm sign
Faith-in-Scholarship

Is Covid history?

A virus in itself, even Covid-19, doesn’t know what effects it can have in our world. It’s simply part of the natural world, part of the domain of the microbiologists. But when a virus sparks a pandemic, then we’re dealing with something a lot more complex – history. When we Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 4 yearsSeptember 6, 2021 ago
St Michael's Mount
Faith-in-Scholarship

Religion in public in the Covid era

In this week’s installment of our series of reflections on the various dimensions of the Covid-19 pandemic, I’m briefly considering the question: how has Covid-19 revealed the religious orientation of our lives? I’m taking this phrase ‘religious orientation’ to mean the ways in which our lives, individually and collectively, are shaped and Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 4 yearsMay 24, 2021 ago
Foggy road
Faith-in-Scholarship

One year on: writing from the middle of the story

It’s almost a year since my last post for FiSch, on writing my acknowledgements to my recently completed thesis. Since then I’ve defended and finalised it: anyone who cares to can now download 100,000 words on ‘Anchoritic Prayer in Time‘! Since this is a pandemic year, of course, some things are still Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 4 yearsApril 6, 2021 ago
Thank you blocks
Faith-in-Scholarship

Writing acknowledgements: depending on others

Just over a week ago I submitted my doctoral thesis. One of the most enjoyable parts of the final few weeks of this process was writing the acknowledgements. Before sitting down to do this, I had thought to myself: “I’m not going to be one of those people who writes Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 5 yearsApril 20, 2020 ago
Bible on lectern
Faith-in-Scholarship

Solitude and unity: a medieval perspective

Like many of you, I spent yesterday morning, not at church, where I would usually be, but sitting on my sofa at home in front of a laptop, watching a livestream of my pastor preaching to an empty building. In just a week, it seems, everything has changed. The Covid-19 Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 5 yearsMarch 22, 2020 ago
Hands clasped in prayer
Faith-in-Scholarship

Reading and praying

I’ve written before on FiSch, as well as elsewhere, about my research on prayer. Today I want to look at a particular idea which jumped out at me recently, speaking to my own life and practice as well as to the medieval recluses it was meant for. This is the simple statement in Ancrene Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 5 yearsFebruary 17, 2020 ago
Desert path
Faith-in-Scholarship

A poem for a new year

As 2019 has come to a close, and a new decade is beginning, I have been thinking about a poem by Emily Dickinson – one of my favourites, for its enigmatic imagery and its expression of longing: ‘I did not reach Thee’. Here is the first stanza (you can read Read more…

By Alicia Smith, 5 yearsJanuary 6, 2020 ago

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Latest comments
  1. Tim Bowman on Kim Kardashian and how her family was rescued from the Armenian GenocideMay 29, 2025

    Wow, what a story of deep faithfulness. To leave everything because of a prophecy. Truly inspiring. I visited Kim Kardashian's…

  2. James Skillen on The Incredible Story of the Slave who became a Famous ScientistApril 30, 2025

    Thanks very much Mark and Steve for this touching story. Doreen and I now live in Alabama and have visited…

  3. Kevin Keefe on Challenging Dualism: Serving God as an EngineerApril 13, 2025

    Thanks Mark, for sharing another interesting and thought-provoking article.

  4. Dave Hopwood on Challenging Dualism: Serving God as an EngineerMarch 29, 2025

    Thanks for this piece and this reminder Mark, I'm grateful for the way the web has enabled me to daily…

  5. Dr Philip Thomas on Challenging Dualism: Serving God as an EngineerMarch 20, 2025

    Thanks for this piece, Mark. Yes, we should strive to conduct ourselves, however we use technology, with one central purpose…

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