Our people

Revd Dr Kevin Grove is an Associate Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Born and raised in Montana, USA, Kevin Grove was ordained a Holy Cross priest at Notre Dame in 2010. After doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College) and before joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Grove was a post-doctoral researcher at L’Institut Catholique in Paris, France and a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to his research and teaching, Grove serves at Notre Dame as an assistant faculty chaplain, Director of the Master of Divinity program, and as a pastoral resident for undergraduates in Dunne Hall.

Dr Gumber is a ‘Mountain Climate Scientist’ at the British Antarctic Survey, in Cambridge. He is also a Senior Member of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. His focus is on high-resolution regional climate modelling, with an emphasis on understanding the role and future of mountain glaciers as a water resource, particularly in the Himalayas and Alps.

Before moving to the UK, he earned undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Chemical and Mechanical Engineering (cloud microphysics) in India. His PhD led to advances in understanding the transformation of vehicle-mediated particles into cloud droplets over congested and heavily urbanised Indian cities. This involved a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune (Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India) under the aegis of the Cloud Aerosol Interaction and Precipitation Enhancement Experiment.

Outside research, he enjoys reading about the natural world and exploring ways to rethink our relationship with mountains and rivers as more than just landscapes.”

Fr Matthew Gummess is a Postdoctoral Associate of the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry and a Carmelite friar, with roots in New Mexico and Chicago. He is a science and religion scholar with a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied history and philosophy of science and systematic theology. He also holds degrees from Yale University and Catholic Theological Union. His research focuses on the intersection between Catholic teaching on sex and gender and scientific theories of the same. During 2022 and 2023, he lived at Fisher House, the Cambridge Catholic Chaplaincy, while writing his dissertation and doing research in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Prior to his academic career, Fr Gummess worked as a parish priest in South Central Los Angeles. He has also served as an LGBTQ+ chaplain at St Mary's College in Indiana and at Cambridge.

My research is focused on resilience of infrastructure, the assessment of large scale projects for sustainability, and energy efficiency and infection control in buildings.

Peter Guthrie was the first Professor in Engineering for Sustainable Development in the UK, taking up this post at the University of Cambridge in 2000. Prior to that he was in engineering consultancy for over 25 years. His research is focused on resilience of infrastructure, the assessment of large scale projects for sustainability, and energy efficiency and infection control in buildings. A civil engineer, Peter has worked in countries such as Nigeria, Malaysia, Lesotho, Sudan, Philippines, Ethiopia, and Botswana, and on major infrastructure projects such as London 2012, Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1), Conwy Tunnel, major airports, and building projects. He has recently led research consultancy for Lloyd’s Register Foundation (LRF). Peter was a Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2020-2024), and is currently leading work on Pandemic Preparedness and on Infection Resilient Environments. Peter is founder and Vice-President of the charity RedR Engineers for Disaster Relief.

Academic Profile

Publications

• MacAskill, Kristen, O’Hanlon, Francesca, Guthrie, Peter, Mian, Juliet, (2020). Fostering resilience-oriented thinking in engineering practice Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability Volume 173 Issue 7, October pp. 356- 364 DOI: 10.1680/jensu.19.00049
• George, Jennifer; Guthrie, Peter; Orr, John, (2022). "Re-Defining Shelter: Humanitarian Sheltering". July. Disasters Journal doi: 10.1111/disa.12555
• Short, CA, Forman, T, MacAskill, KA, Soulti, E, Mutschler, R, Mohareb, E, Solanki, J, Britnell, J, Georgiadou, MC, Brady-Patel, B, Guthrie, P, (2020). NHS Estate: Energy Efficiency and Practice. Journal of Building Engineering. Submitted for review, May.
• Zhou, W., Reiner, D., Moncaster, A., Guthrie, P., (2022) Modelling future trends of annual embodied energy of urban residential building stock in China. Energy Policy Vol 165, June doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112932
• Blom CM and Guthrie PM, 2019. Strategic intent .... Proc ICE – Engg Sustainability 172(4): 167–183

Awards & Recognitions

• CBE 2024
• FREng 1997
• OBE1993

Dunya Habash is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Her interdisciplinary research explores the intersection of aesthetics, the arts, forced migration, integration, and education in post-conflict settings. She completed a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Cambridge in 2023. Through a Woolf Institute Cambridge Scholarship and under the supervision of Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, her ethnographic research with Syrian musicians and artists in Türkiye examined the effects of ‘integration’ on performance practices and cultural education among Syrian communities post-displacement. Before and during her PhD studies, Dunya worked as a Public Engagement Coordinator and Outreach Officer at the Woolf Institute. Through these roles she developed and disseminated an interfaith workshop programme based on the institute's Living in Harmony research project alongside a series of teacher resources for RE educators. She is also a Teaching Fellow at CRASSH’s Global History Lab and an affiliated researcher at the Woolf Institute. Her research has been supported by the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the Royal Musical Association, the Music & Letters Trust, and the Cambridge Trust.

As Campaign Director for University Development and Alumni Relations, Kat provides strategic leadership for the planning and delivery of the next comprehensive campaign for collegiate Cambridge.

Prior to this, she worked for the NHS as Director for the Cambridge Children’s Hospital £100m capital campaign, working across multiple campaign and project partners as well as a dedicated Campaign Board.

Kat also spent six years at UCL as Executive Head of Campaign and Supporter Engagement, overseeing campaign projects and propositions, donor relations, communications and events throughout the £600m It’s All Academic Campaign.

Before entering the higher education sector, Kat held fundraising, engagement and governance roles at organisations including The Place2Be, The Royal Institution, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Foundation for FutureLondon.

Susan is Director of Studies in Natural Sciences (Physical Sciences)

Farhana’s research explores the intersection of private law and technology. Her doctoral thesis examines the challenges posed to normative legal frameworks by blockchain technology and cryptoassets, with a particular focus on the transmission of digital assets on death.  Prior to coming to Cambridge, Farhana completed an LLB at the University of Warwick and went on to read for the BCL and MPhil in Law at the University of Oxford. In 2021, she was called to the Bar of England and Wales. At Cambridge, she is affiliated with the Cambridge Private Law Centre and the Cambridge Family Law Centre.  She also contributes to policy discussions on succession law and digital assets.

Farhana supervises undergraduates in Land Law and is committed to making legal education accessible and inclusive.

In his long and successful career as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Hermann has founded or co-founded companies in a wide range of technology sectors. These include Acorn Computers (where he helped spin our ARM), Active Book Company, Virata, Net Products, NetChannel and Cambridge Network Limited.

Lizzie Henderson is Co-Director of The Faraday Institute’s Youth and Schools Programme. Through workshops, books, resources, and educational research Lizzie and the team work to enable young people and their influencers to confidently explore big questions – specifically those regarding science-faith interactions.

Lizzie holds a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, specialising in Evolutionary and Behavioural Biology, Geology and the History and Philosophy of Science. She has long held a strong interest in the communication and public understanding of the interactions of science and faith and has worked with children and young people in a variety of contexts for many years.

Lizzie has been building the Faraday Institute’s Youth and Schools Programme since 2013 and has seen many thousands of students respond enthusiastically to the combination of hands-on science with honest, dynamic and thought-provoking discussion about science, faith and their interactions. She also consults and advises on several collaborative projects working to develop new, inter-disciplinary approaches to education.

My clinical interests include all aspects of small animal medicine and diagnostic imaging. I was the former Vice-Master of St Edmund’s College and the former Dean of the Veterinary School. 

Mike Herrtage graduated in Veterinary Medicine from the Liverpool University in 1975. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Small Animal Medicine in the Department of Veterinary Medicine. He became a Fellow of St. Edmund’s College in 1990. He oversaw the small animal medicine and diagnostic imaging services at the Queen’s Veterinary School Hospital until his retirement and still works part-time in the Hospital. His clinical interests include all aspects of small animal medicine and diagnostic imaging, but he has a particular interest in endocrine and metabolic disorders. He has spoken at many international meetings and published over 200 articles in refereed journals. He was awarded the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (B.S.A.V.A.) Woodrow Award in 1986 for outstanding contributions in the field of small animal veterinary medicine and the B.S.A.V.A. Blaine Award for outstanding contributions to the advancement of small animal medicine in 2000. In 2014, he was awarded the World Small Animal Veterinary Association International Award for Scientific Achievement for outstanding contributions by a veterinarian, who has had a significant impact on the advancement of knowledge concerning the cause, detection, cure and/or control of disorders of companion animals.

He received the B.S.A.V.A. Bourglet Award for really outstanding international contributions to the fields of small animal practice and science in 2019, the British Veterinary Association’s Dalrymple-Champneys Cup and Medal for outstanding services to the advancement of veterinary medicine and science in 2021 and the Queen’s Medal, the highest honour the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons can bestow on an individual in recognition of a highly distinguished career with sustained and outstanding achievements, in 2022.He has been President of the British Veterinary Radiology Association, President of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association, President of the European Society of Veterinary Internal Medicine and the first President of the European Board of Veterinary Specialisation, which was instrumental in promoting and co-ordinating the development of veterinary specialisation in Europe. He is a Diplomate of both the European College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and of the European College of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging and is a Past President of the European College of Veterinary Internal Medicine.

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

Philippa is currently the Chair and Pro Chancellor of the University of Manchester, the Senior Independent Director of Ordnance Survey and of Cambridge University Hospitals Trust and a Non-Executive Director of Cyber and Specialist Operations Command.

As Group Human Resources Director of ITV Plc until 2009, Philippa shaped the consolidation of the regional ITV companies. Prior to that she held general management and then HR roles in Granada Group Plc. She began her career in marketing with ICI and has an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from The Queen's College Oxford.

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.

My interests lie in the relationship between science and theology. Topics include: (i) the fine-tunings of natural law necessary for the universe to evolve life; (ii) Karl Barth’s rejection of natural theology; and (iii) ‘ramified natural theology’, i.e. the defence of specifically Christian claims.

The Revd Dr Rodney Holder read mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge (MA, MMath), and spent two years teaching mathematics at The Manchester Grammar School. In 1974 he returned to academia to research for a D.Phil. in astrophysics at Christ Church, Oxford, following this with a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Astrophysics in Oxford. His research was on accretion of intergalactic gas by the galaxy. Dr Holder then spent fourteen years with EDS (formerly Scicon) as an operational research consultant to UK Ministry of Defence clients. This involved mathematical modelling and decision analysis applied to defence procurement, and led to several published papers. His first book on science and religion (Nothing But Atoms and Molecules? Probing the Limits of Science) was published in 1993. In 1994 Dr Holder returned to Oxford, taking a first class degree in theology, and a Diploma in Ministry. Following ordination in the Church of England, Dr Holder served in parish ministry in South Warwickshire, Heidelberg, and Buckinghamshire. During this time he published several papers and his second book, God, the Multiverse, and Everything: Modern Cosmology and the Argument from Design.

Dr Holder was Course Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge, from its inception in January 2006 until 31 January 2013. He has remained active academically since then. His research focus has largely been in three areas: (i) utilizing Bayesian confirmation theory to assess the metaphysical significance of the fine-tunings of natural law necessary for the universe to be capable of evolving life; (ii) challenging Karl Barth’s rejection of natural theology through dialogue with major theologians who have succeeded him; and (iii) describing and utilizing ‘ramified natural theology’, which adopts the same Bayesian approach used to argue for the existence of God in natural theology, to defend specifically Christian claims about God’s acting in history in the person of Jesus Christ. Dr Holder has supervised undergraduates and postgraduate diploma students for ten colleges, including St Edmund’s, for the ‘Theology and Science’ paper in Part IIB of the Cambridge Theological and Religious Studies Tripos, 2007-2016. He has (2019 – 2025) taught overseas students on a Faraday Institute enrichment course and has given many lectures at Faraday Institute courses and more widely, here and overseas. Dr Holder’s further books include The Heavens Declare: Natural Theology and the Legacy of Karl Barth; Ramified Natural Theology in Science and Religion; and, co-edited with Simon Mitton, Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy. He was Reviews Editor of Science and Christian Belief and on the national committee of Christians in Science from 2006-2017. He is a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, a member of the Society of Ordained Scientists and of the Science and Religion Forum, and a trustee of The Faraday Institute.

Academic Profile

Publications 

• Rodney D. Holder, Ramified Natural Theology in Science and Religion: Moving on from Natural Theology, 2021, Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, NY: Routledge.
• Rodney D. Holder, God, the Multiverse, and Everything: Modern Cosmology and the Argument from Design, 2016 [2004], Abingdon, Oxon, and New York, NY: Routledge.
• R. D. Holder, The Heavens Declare: Natural Theology and the Legacy of Karl Barth, 2012, West Conshohocken: Templeton Press.
• Rodney Holder, ‘Georges Lemaître and Fred Hoyle: Contrasting Characters in Science and Religion’, in Rodney Holder and Simon Mitton (eds), Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy, 2012, Heidelberg: Royal Astronomical Society-Springer, 39-53.
• R. D. Holder, ‘Hume on Miracles’, 1998, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49, 49-65.

Awards & Recognitions

• Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications
• Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion
• Templeton Foundation Prize for Exemplary Papers in Humility Theology (1998)

Lindsay is the CEO of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. She has over 25 years’ experience of working with senior leaders from multinational businesses, financial institutions and influential organisations to accelerate progress to a sustainable economy. Prior to stepping into the CEO role, she built CISL’s portfolio of international education programmes which now have over 40,000 alumni, developing senior level understanding of the need to transform economic structures and markets. She has led CISL’s contribution to evolving international debates on business leadership and strategic responses to sustainability challenges. She speaks on global trends and the commercial implications for business – most recently on the need to align competitiveness, resilience and sustainability. Other areas of focus include the implications of geopolitics and AI, the imperative to take action on nature and the relationship between business and society