Our people

Professor Philip Sheldrake's research currently focuses on the intersection of both spirituality and theology with “place identity” and cities, particularly cultivating public values/virtues and enabling effective public leadership. 

Professor Philip Sheldrake is a Visiting Scholar at St Edmund’s College. He is also Professor, Senior Fellow & Research Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Spirituality at Oblate School of Theology, San Antonio, Texas.

Professor Ken Dark is an archaeologist and historian specialising in the 1st millennium AD in Europe and the Middle East, archaeological method and theory, and the application of long-term perspectives to the contemporary world. A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, and an elected member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he has written 15 books and numerous papers, and directed archaeological projects in Istanbul, beside the Sea of Galilee, and in Nazareth – where he identified a 1st century house believed by many to have been the childhood home of Jesus. In addition to desk-based research, and fieldwork at Tintagel in Cornwall, he is currently directing research on the mission centre at Canterbury established in 597 by Gregory the Great to convert England.

Professor Mahinda Deegalle is a Bye-Fellow at St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge.

He is a Professor Emeritus at Bath Spa University and a Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2022–23. He is trained in the History of Religions at Harvard University and The University of Chicago. He held the first Numata Professorship at McGill University and NEH Professorship at Colgate University. He conducted post-doctoral research at Kyoto University and Aichi Gakuin University with funding from JSPS and Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai. He acquired grants from the British Academy / Leverhulme Trust, the British Council and Fulbright. He is the author of Popularizing Buddhism and the editor of several volumes, including Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka (2006), Philosophy, Ethics and Buddhist Practice (2023) and the co-editor of Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law (2024).

Brandon Vaidyanathan is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institutional Flourishing Lab at the Catholic University of America.

His research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, medical, and scientific institutions and has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019), co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019), and editor of Rebuilding Trust: Clergy Morale in the Wake of the Abuse Crisis (CUA Press, 2025). His latest book (under review) is The Beauty of Understanding: What Scientists Can Teach Us About the Pleasure of Learning. Brandon is also Founder of Beauty at Work, a media platform which includes a podcast and YouTube channel exploring the role of beauty. His ongoing research examines the transformative power of beauty at the individual and collective levels.

Professor Ralf Karolus Wüstenberg studied Protestant theology in Berlin, Cambridge and Heidelberg.

Since 2009 Chair of Protestant Theology specialising in Systematic and Historical Theology at the European University of Flensburg (EUF) and Director of the European Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution; he is an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch and a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, previously Visiting Professorships at Union Theological Seminary, New York City (2002/2003) and Freie University of Berlin (2006-2009).

In addition to his international research activities, Dr Wüstenberg performs a number of voluntary tasks. Among other things, he is a project ambassador for the House of One in Berlin and, after ordination and parish ministry (2003-2005), has been a permanent guest preacher at Berlin Cathedral since 2018. Dr Wüstenberg is the author and editor of 25 titles in English and German, including introductions to theology and Christology; on current topics such as the political dimension of reconciliation or dialogue with Islam and on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology and ethics.

As Director of the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research, my research spans the domains of housing, digital inclusion, and social policy.

Professor Burgess is Director of the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research in the Department of Land Economy, Director of the Isaac Newton Trust, Vice-Master of St Edmund's College, and Deputy Senior Proctor, University of Cambridge.

My research focuses on the philosophical and theological foundations of European political life, particularly the concept of human dignity as it has evolved in the Western tradition. I am especially interested in Catholic social teaching, Christian democracy, and the tensions between religious and secular visions of the person. My current work explores how the personalist tradition can offer a richer understanding of politics and society in the face of contemporary European challenges.

Professor John Loughlin is Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, Senior Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of European Politics at Cardiff University. He is a political scientist with a longstanding interest in the intersection of political theory, religion, and European integration. Formerly Director of the Von Hügel Institute at St Edmund’s, he led research and public engagement on questions of human dignity, religious freedom, and the role of Christianity in European political life.

He has published widely on subsidiarity, regionalism, and the relationship between Church and state, and most recently authored Human Dignity: Its Roots and Challenges in Western Thought, a major study of the intellectual history of the person. Professor Loughlin continues to contribute to international research networks and serves as a reviewer for European-funded academic projects.

Former President of Ireland

My research focuses on Foundations of mathematics, in particular set theory and mathematical logic. Philosophy of mathematics. Empirical studies of mathematical practices.

Benedikt Löwe is a researcher connecting mathematics, computer science, philosophy and the social sciences. He is the Professor of mathematical logic and interdisciplinary applications of logic at the Universität Hamburg and is the chair-holder of the CIPSH chair ‘Diversity of Mathematical Research Cultures and Practices’. He is a member if the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences (AIPS), the Academia Europaea (AE), the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg, and a Fellow of the International Science Council (FISC). He currently serves as Vice President of the International Humanities Council (CIPSH) and the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI).

In addition to being the Director of Studies for Mathematics at St Edmund's, he is a College Professor, Bye Fellow, Director of Studies at Lucy Cavendish College and a Fellow of Churchill College.

Academic Profile

Awards & Recognitions 

• Member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences
• Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE)
• Member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg
• Fellow of the International Science Council (FISC)

Mohamed Zaki is the Deputy Director of Cambridge Service Alliance at the Institute for Manufacturing, a research centre that brings together the world’s leading firms and academics to address digital service transformation challenges. I serve as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Service Management. I hold visiting professorships, international academic collaborators and fellowships at several global institutions, such as the University of Queensland in Australia.

I am a high-profile academic with an extensive research portfolio in “Service Management”. My research interests lie in service experience, emphasising the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to design and manage customer experience and create new data-driven business models. I have many publications in highly-ranked service management journals. Also, my papers appeared in top conferences and practical outlets such as the Harvard Business Review. I successfully generated funds from industry and UK research councils (a total contribution of over £10 million).

I have consulted and lectured for over 50 organisations, including Manchester United, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry, CEMEX, Caterpillar, IKEA, HCL Tech, Bouygues, and others. I am the course leader for the Data-Driven Design for Customer Experience (CX) online course, offered through Cambridge Advance Online at Cambridge University Press and Assessment.

Professor Mihaela Kelemen is Chair in Business and Society at Nottingham University Business School, UK where she is also Director of Professional Practice and Acting Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange. She has developed a creative methodology of stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production entitled Cultural Animation which underpins a variety of participatory research projects funded by the AHRC, GCRF, ESRC, EPSRC, MRC and HEFCE on topics including community sustainability, food poverty, health inequalities, and post-disaster reconstruction. Her most recent projects focus on hardly reached communities and the importance of their voice and agency in building trust with relevant institutions in order to address health inequalities. Her most recent international project explored the relationship between hope, futurity and agency from the point of view of marginalised women from conflict affected areas in the Philippines and Pakistan.

Her research has been disseminated in top academic journals as well as via books, podcasts, interviews, virtual games, documentary dramas and community based exhibitions curated jointly with the award winning New Vic Theatre. She is an expert at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab, a fellow of the RSA and a member of the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Peer Review College and of the AHRC Peer Review College.

Maura Ryan is the John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Ryan's primary interests are in the areas of bioethics and health policy, women’s health and development, and Catholic Social Teaching.  She is the editor of two volumes in social and medical ethics and her book Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction: The Cost of Longing was published by Georgetown University Press in 2001. Her articles have appeared in the Hastings Center Report, Theological Studies, The Journal of Philosophy and Medicine, Signs, The Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Christian Bioethics, Environmental Health Perspectives and Ethics and Behavior.  Her current project treats the intersections of health, development and human rights in Christian bioethics. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Christian Ethics, the editorial boards of the Religious Studies Review and Ethics and Behavior, the St. Joseph County Healthcare Advisory Consortium and the ethics committee for Hospice of St. Joseph County. Ryan served as Associate Provost at Notre Dame 2001-2004, Associate Dean for the Humanities and Faculty Affairs in the College of Arts and Letters 2009-2015 and is currently serving as Vice President and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs.

Clemens is Professor of Social Ethics in the Keough School of Global Affairs and Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, University of Notre Dame (USA), and holds a joint appointment with Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. He is also a concurrent professor of theology in the Department of Theology.

Sedmak holds doctoral degrees in theology (Catholic University of Linz), philosophy and social theory (University of Innsbruck). Prior to his appointment at the University of Notre Dame, he was F. D. Maurice Professor for Moral and Social Theology at King's College London, and has held multiple positions at the University of Salzburg, serving as Director of the Center for Ethics and Poverty Research and Chair for Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion, and as President of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Ethics.

My research focus is on philosophy of religion. More specifically topics like: theodicee and suffering, religious language and metaphor, religious emotions, and broader interdisciplinary, collaborative research on subjects related to 'lived/living religion'.

Walter Van Herck received a BA in Philosophy from the Jesuit university (UFSIA) in Antwerp and a MA in Philosophy from the Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. His PhD dissertation was on the role of metaphors in religious language (Catholic University of Leuven, 1996). After postdoctoral research on religious emotions, he became lecturer and later on professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Antwerp. From 2013 till 2023 he was also a guest-professor for the same discipline at the University of Ghent. From 2017 till 2024 he was senior research associate of the VHI, Saint Edmund's College.
He provided together with colleagues the first Dutch translations of David Humes The Natural History of Religion and Immanuel Kants Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft. He has published numerous book reviews, journal articles and contributions to collections of essays.He is the editor in chief of International Journal of Philosophy and Theology (published by Routledge). Currently, he is president of the European Society for Philosophy of Religion (ESPR).

Publications

• Lemmens, Willem & Walter Van Herck (eds), Religious Emotions. Some Philosophical Explorations, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008
• Geybels, Hans & Walter Van Herck (eds), Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, London/New York: Continuum, 2011, paperback edition: London: Bloomsbury, 2012
• Gómez, Liliana & Walter Van Herck (eds), The Sacred in the City, London/New York: Continuum, 2012, paperback edition: London: Bloomsbury, 2013
• Cools, Arthur, Walter Van Herck, Koen Verrycken (eds), Metaphors in modern and contemporary philosophy, Brussels: University Press Antwerp, 2013
• Latré, Stijn, Walter Van Herck and Guido Vanheeswijck (eds), Radical Secularization? An inquiry into the religious roots of secular culture, New York: Bloomsbury, 2014

My research focuses on anthropology in the age of artificial intelligence, the spiritual resources of human intelligence, and the pre-modern tradition of Christian orthodoxy. I am the director of the research project "Embodiment in Theological Anthropology", funded by the Austrian Science Fund.

Johannes Hoff is VHI Senior Research Associate and Full Professor at the Institute of Systematic Theology of the University of Innsbruck (Austria), succeeding Karl Rahner. Prior to this he was Professor of Philosophical Theology at Heythrop College, University of London, St David’s University of Wales (previously University of Wales, Lampeter), and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. His first academic monograph was on the theological implications of the work of Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau, his second on Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). His first English-language monograph, The Analogical Turn: Rethinking Modernity with Nicholas of Cusa (2013), brought together these areas of research. It shows how Cusa developed a critical response to the celebration of mathematically generated 'images of the world' in early modern art and science, and the related narcissistic fascination with immersive virtual spaces. In his German monograph Defence of the Sacred. Anthropology of the Digital Transformation (2021), Hoff presents a first synthesis of his recent research on anthropology in the age of artificial intelligence. According to Hoff, the digital transformation has caused an economically accelerated devastation of spiritual diversity that has provoked one of the greatest civilizational ruptures since the Axal Age, in which the religious and philosophical traditions of world history originated (around 500 BC). This challenge, Hoff argues, requires us to revise the theological underpinnings that have made our modern view of humanity plausible in the wake of the media-technological innovations of the Renaissance. Moreover, it requires us to recover the spiritual potentials that distinguish humans from computing machines and mark them as intellectually gifted, personal beings. His research on a Trinitarian anthropology of technology, building on Augustine and Cusa, is a first response to this challenge. Against this background, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) granted the research project "4e Cognition in Theological Anthropology" proposed by Johannes Hoff in collaboration with Enrico Grube, which started in September 2023. The project explores the significance of the body/living body problem for Christian doctrine from a historical and systematic perspective, with particular emphasis on the doctrine of salvation and the patristic doctrine of the deification of man (theosis). The findings of contemporary phenomenology of the body and the neurobiological concept of embodied intelligence are hypothesised to facilitate a reorientation of Christian anthropology in the context of its historical sources. Part of this research is Hoff's research cooperation with the "Institute for Information Systems & Society" at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration.

Professor Sarah Perrett  is Associate Director of The Faraday Institute, which she joined in 2020, when she was elected to Senior Membership of St Edmund’s College. She is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where she has led a research group since 2003 and she continues to divide her time between Beijing and Cambridge. Sarah studied Natural Sciences (Chemistry) followed by a PhD in Protein Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She then held a Research Fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge before moving to Beijing in 2000. She was awarded an OBE for services to UK/China relations in the scientific field in the 2015 Queen’s New Year Honours List.

Sarah is Editor-in-Chief of Essays in Biochemistry (Portland Press). Her research interests include mechanisms of protein folding and amyloid formation. She has published over 100 research articles and has edited three books.

Professor Alain Tschudin completed his PhD in Psychology in 1999 through the then University of Natal (The University of Kwazulu-Natal) on the comparative evolution of social complexity and intelligence in dolphins and primates.

In 2007, he completed his second PhD in moral philosophy and theology on the meaning of being, at the University of Cambridge. Tschudin worked for the University of Seville and the European Commission on a project to foster social integration and economic participation for immigrant and ethnic minorities in Spain. He later returned to South Africa and ran the Conflict Transformation and Peace Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal using dialogics to pursue solidarity among residents and refugees, along with peace, democratization and human rights initiatives in marginal communities.

Tschudin has done humanitarian work with Save the Children International, with UNICEF in the Central African Republic and served as the UN’s inter-agency Child Protection Assessment Coordinator for Northern Syria. He was Executive Director of Good Governance Africa, a pan-African NGO, in Johannesburg, Professor in the WITS School of Governance and lead consultant for the UN Special Advisor on Africa. Subsequently, Tschudin was Director of the International Centre of Nonviolence at the Durban University of Technology. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland and is a Senior Research Associate at the Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. Since 2022, he has served voluntarily as President of the Association Montessori Internationale, the NGO set up by Dr Maria Montessori in 1929, and he recently joined the Board of the Gorée Institute in Senegal.

Seamus is Director of Studies for our Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology degree.