Our people

Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge

Tina Barsby is recognised for scientific achievements in crop science and is Honorary Professor of Agricultural Botany at the University. Following 18 years with the plant breeder Limagrain, in 2008 she became the first female CEO of NIAB, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, from which she retired in 2021. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society of England.

Tina was awarded the OBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List for services to agricultural science and biotechnology.  Tina chairs the Agricultural Advisory Board of Future Biogas, and the Board of Farm Data Principles. She is employed part-time as Agricultural and Scientific Advisor to the G’s group of companies.

She has extensive experience as a Trustee and is currently a member of the John Innes Foundation and the Lawes Trust, as well as a member of the College Council.

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 is on the history and theology of Christian monasticism, mainly how monastic theology is a unique theological methodology. I also research the history of monasticism and spirituality in the Anglican tradition. I actively contribute to academic, professional, and ecclesial communities.

Rev Dr Peters is Professor of Medieval and Spiritual Theology in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University, USA. He is also the Servants of Christ Research Professor of Monastic Studies and Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, USA. He is the author of "Reforming the Monastery: Protestant Theologies of the Religious Life," "The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality," and "Peter of Damascus: Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian," among other works. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Society of Anglican Theologians, the Executive Board of the American Benedictine Academy and is a board member of Anglican House Publishers. Professor Peters’ interest in Christian monasticism led him to pursue a Dottorato in Studi Monastici from the Pontificio Ateneo di Sant’Anselmo in Rome, the first non-monastic to earn the degree.

Though an expert on Christian monasticism, Professor Peters has also been involved in researching and writing on Anglicanism, including Edward Pusey’s support of the re-establishment of monasticism in the nineteenth-century Church of England and Anglican spirituality. To that end he has published "Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction" and several articles on Anglican monasticism. His interest in Anglicanism grew out of his appointment as Vicar of the Anglican Church of the Epiphany, La Mirada, USA.

Professor Peters is a Consulting Editor for the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, is on the Editorial Board of Magistra: A Journal of Women’s Spirituality in History and is a regular reviewer for the American Benedictine Review. In addition to his appointment at St Edmund’s College, he is a Visiting Scholar at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford.

Academic Profile

Publications

• Greg Peters, Anglican Spirituality, 2024, Cascade Books
• Greg Peters, The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality, 2018, Baker Academic
• Greg Peters, Peter of Damascus: Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian, 2011, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
• Greg Peters, “The ‘Reanimation Principle’ of Edward Bouverie Pusey: The Re-Establishment of Monasticism in the Church of England,” 2025, Anglican and Episcopal History

I research on systematic theology, especially Trinity and Ecclesiology, and on the connection between theology and spirituality. I work at the crossroads between academy and the church and write and give talks to both academic and non-academic audiences.

I research on systematic theology, especially Trinity and Ecclesiology, and on the connection between theology and spirituality. I work at the crossroads between academy and the church and write and give talks to both academic and non-academic audiences.

Academic Profile

Publications 

• Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 2016, OUP: Oxford. Paperback edition with a foreword by Rowan Williams.
• Luigi Gioia, “The Threat of Death As a Test for Theological Authenticity”, 2017, in The Practice of the Presence of God: Theology As a Way of Life, Ed. Martin Laird and Sheelah Treflé Hidden, Routledge: New York, 120-9.
• Luigi Gioia, St Benedict’s Wisdom. Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church, 2020, Liturgical Press: Collegeville (MN, USA), and Canterbury Press (UK)
• Luigi Gioia, “St Benedict’s Rule as the Antidote to Regulatory Inflation”, 2021, Reviews in Religion & Theology, 28:1, 4-9.
• Luigi Gioia, “Prayer in the Secular City”, 2024, Concilium 4, 41-50

Awards & Recognitions 

• The book Say It To God. In Search of Prayer (Bloomsbury, 2017) was chosen as the Archbishop of Canterbury Lent Book 2018.
• The book St Benedict’s Wisdom. Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church (Liturgical Press, 2020) received the First Place in the category of Spirituality Award by the CMA (Catholic Media Association) in 2021.

My research interests focus on the science-faith interface of natural hazards and disasters and theodicies. I also have research interest in the field of trauma studies, theologies of trauma and pastoral care of trauma.

The Rev. Dr. Abbott has an passionate academic and practical interest in the causation natural hazard related disasters, in the human responses to them, recovery from them and mitigation of them from the perspective of the science-faith intersection. From 2012-2021 he has carried out projects in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake, exploring how survivors’ religious beliefs influenced their response to and recovery from that catastrophic event. From 2015 to 2019 he worked on projects in New Orleans, the Philippines, and in Somerset, exploring the influence of faith beliefs on survivors’ relationships with God, with their communities, and with the natural environment. Since 2020 to date he has been conducting a project around the impacts of fear, anger, trust and hope on Christians during the pandemic. He is also currently researching faith a resilience in a joint project between The Faraday Institute and the National Preparedness Commission. Following over thirty years of church pastoral ministry, Roger gained his Ph.D. in a practical theology of disaster response, from the University of Wales, Trinity & St. David. He has taught Master’s modules on the pastoral response to trauma, has run a consultancy on pastoral care of trauma, and has been an active responder to traumatic incidents in the UK since 1989. He is a member of the British and Irish Association for Practical Theologians, The Society for the Study of Theology, and The Society for the Study of Christian Ethics.

Publications

• Abbott Roger et al What Good is God? Crises, faith, and resilience. 2020 Oxford: Monarch
• Abbott, Roger Philip et al Narratives of Faith from the Haitian Earthquake. 2019 Abingdon: Routledge
• Abbott, Roger Philip “‘I Will Show You My Faith by My Works’ 2019 Religions 10, 213
• Abbott, Roger Philip. Sit On Our Hands, or Stand On Our Feet? 2013 . Eugene: Or.: Wipf & Stock
• Abbott, Roger Philip. 2012. “Trauma, Compassion, and Community.” Practical Theology. 5.1: 31-46

President of the University of Notre Dame

My research is in theology, intellectual disability and Christian community. My current work uses a participative approach, investigating belonging to a Christian community of differing intellectual abilities with members of the community.

Carole received her PhD from the University of Durham, where she worked on Rowan Williams’ concept of difficulty as a tool for negotiating difference between religious and secular life and commitment in the public square. She was a member of the academic staff of Wesley House in the Cambridge Theological Federation from 2015 to 2021, and Director of Studies from 2017, teaching political theology and leading the MA programme on Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy. Carole is currently project leader for Growing in Friendship, a participative theological action research project of the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability and Lyn’s House Cambridge. Lyn’s House is a Christian community of friendship for people with and without intellectual disabilities. The Growing in Friendship project is the first instance of participative research using a theological action research approach with a community of differing intellectual abilities. She is also a member of the Von Hügel Institute’s research project Disability and Knowledge in collaboration with the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway and L’Arche Italy. She is ordained in the British Methodist Church, has served on its Faith and Order Committee, and is currently a member of the British Methodist-Roman Catholic Dialogue Commission. She studied in Cambridge (King’s College) for her first degree in Modern Languages (French and Italian).

Academic Profile

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)