One of my favourite pieces of Christmas music is ‘For unto us a Child is born’ from Georg Friderich Händel’s Messiah. I have loved it since I was a child, touched by its bouncing joy and the intricacy of its polyphonic choral writing, with lines appearing and disappearing like needles through Read more
In teaching elementary probability and statistics to undergraduates, I’ve been reading about some of the great mathematicians who are commemorated in the names of functions and constants. This has led me to ponder the role of religious worldviews in mathematical genius, and it’s on that topic that I’d like to share a few Read more
One of the figures in the Bible who I’m most fond of is the prophet Daniel: mainly because, like me, he was a literature student. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it […]Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king’s Read more
Intellectual servanthood ‘Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”’ Mark 9:35 ‘“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes Read more
A major challenge for younger academics is the increasing prevalence of both fixed-term contracts and institutional mobility. A year ago I wrote about moving from a university to a business environment, and now I’m back in a university again, with another shift in my research area. So I thought it might be helpful to share the story of these transitions Read more
Today I want to share a prayer that has become a regular part of my working life. At the Scriptorium here in Oxford, this is one of the prayers we say together at the beginning of every working day. It’s usually attributed to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas; perhaps it will be Read more
In the next few weeks, I am hoping to submit my thesis. I’m not at the summit of my academic career (at least, I hope I’m not!) but I am approaching a significant waypoint that I’ve been working towards for three years. I don’t really know what I expected to Read more
Looking outside as I write this, I see that the nights are drawing in and there’s the beginnings of a chill in the air, which can mean only one thing: autumn term is nearly upon us. Inevitably, then, the minds of many academics will fast be turning away from ongoing Read more
I’m drawing closer to the end of my doctoral work, and that means a lot of my work at the moment is revising drafts. In the last couple of weeks I have been redrafting the introduction to my thesis. This is slow, bitty work: fixing various details, doing small pieces Read more
It’s vacation season once more and everyone seems to be posting pictures of themselves lounging by the river, sipping G&Ts. No better time, then, to consider the role of rest in our work. Academia seems to offer lots of ‘time off’: Easter breaks, Christmas breaks, and summer breaks can dwarf Read more