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
For the early academic, the rallying cry is ‘publish or die’! In an over-saturated job market, we are trained to focus on publication, believing—because we are more or less told—that we are only as good as our publishing record. I have long dreaded the publication process. The stakes seem so Read more
I want to share some experiences from inviting Christian friends to contribute to a course on “the values of nature”, and my own shifting position on one of the major ethical issues of our age. Until recently I tried to steer clear of academic treatment of ethics and values. I was Read more
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
A few months ago I passed a milestone in my own post-PhD academic life, by starting a full-time academic contract. For several years I’d been juggling two part-time contracts at neighbouring universities, adding up to roughly full-time hours and with a higher than usual concentration of teaching, so in terms Read more
Finishing a doctorate is glorious and wonderfully freeing (see previous post). But it’s amazing how quickly reality sets in after a brief moment of victory. One set of goals is replaced by another and the challenge of navigating along the unmarked, foggy road of a DPhil is followed by the Read more
Of all the discipleship opportunities open to Christian PhD students in the UK, perhaps the Cambridge Scholars Network offers evangelical thinkers the most sustained and intense mentoring experience you could easily apply for. This year’s event runs from 12 to 18 July, and I’d like to encourage eligible readers of this blog to Read more
Recently I wrote about my impression of a predominance of religious worldviews and practices among the most celebrated mathematicians. I concluded by indicating that I wouldn’t be surprised if religious worldviews were more conducive to great advances in maths and other disciplines, because of the way that faith and imagination are involved Read more
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
I’ve always felt sad at the passing of Christmas Day: at how quickly the world moves on to Boxing-Day sales, extinguished fairy lights, discarded fir trees and raucous New-Year revelries. Perhaps it’s partly nostalgia, but I yearn for those past times when the twelve days of Christmas were celebrated in full. Read more