FiSch blog

A Thread of History

Posted by Georgina Bartlett in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Monday 4th June 2018

Having recently joined the FiSch Blog team, I thought I should introduce myself properly. I am currently a doctoral student working on British popular song during the Napoleonic Wars. The story of how I ended up working on this project is involved: its chief protagonists include my mother, who pushed me into a music degree during my indecisive youth, a marvelous music-history professor I encountered during my first degree, and a series of very nurturing supervisors, all of whom have had some interest in popular song or the music of Britain.

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music
arts
history

What is a University Club?

Posted by Faith-in-Scholarship in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Thursday 24th May 2018
triangle diagram of university as students and academics in an ethic of mutual trust

Bruce Wearne encourages students to reflect upon institutional relationships in academic life and the effect of higher education reform.

I first developed the above diagram as a part of my response to what was happening at Chisholm Institute of Technology (CIT) in Melbourne back in the 1980s. CIT was part of the “binary system” of higher education in Australia, in which the Institutes of Technology and Colleges of Advanced Education were considered a “cheaper but equal” alternative to universities.

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Christian postgrad groups
Christian university

Eternal progress: how to find fresh ideas

Posted by Richard Gunton in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Monday 7th May 2018

There is a point of view from which it looks implausible that research in any field could continue indefinitely, century after century, endlessly discovering new things about reality.  But if Christ's kingdom will never end, there's a case to be made that cultural development, finally freed from sin, will continue forever under His reign. Might not the created order, once more fully disclosed in the New Creation, be worthy of ongoing scholarly research into eternity?

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skills

Transforming the Mind 2018: early bird deadline approaching!

Posted by Eline van Asperen in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Monday 23rd April 2018

This year's Transforming the Mind, the annual national conference for Christian postgraduates and early career academics, will take place from 15 to 17 June 2018 in Dovedale House, Ilam. The speakers are Nick Megoran and Eline van Asperen, who will help us to think through what it means to be a Christian scholar, drawing on their own experience in UK Higher Education. 

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events

The transcendental context of Christian academic work

Posted by Richard Gunton in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Monday 26th March 2018

Picking up my series on Christian philosophy in diagrams, I want to share an idea that really excites me at the moment - inspired by Andree Troost's "What is Reformational Philosophy?", which I've just finished reading. Perhaps not everyone finds diagrams as wonderful as I do, but they have a great ability to present complex ideas all at once, in the simultaneity of a page or screen.

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Christian philosophy in diagrams

Soli Deo Gloria

Posted by Faith-in-Scholarship in Faith-in-Scholarship blog on Monday 5th March 2018

J.S. Bach often scribbled Soli Deo Gloria at the end of his music: glory to God alone. His humble dedications are beautiful—and striking because of his genius—but they have always left me with niggling questions. We are all called to dedicate our work to the glory of God, but what if we don’t have any glittering keyboard suites on hand? What if all we have to offer just…isn’t great? After all, it doesn’t seem quite the same typing Soli Deo Gloria on an under-baked thesis as it would writing it at the end of a masterly cantata…

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learning and teaching

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