News

New Researchers Join Institute

We are delighted to welcome three new researchers to the Institute in Early Christian Studies and Constructive Theology. Between them, they will work on the ‘Modes of Knowing‘ and the ‘Atheism and Christianity‘ programs, and bring teaching and research experience from universities Australia, the UK and the US.

Dr Rachel Davies joins the Centres for Catholic Thought and Practice, and Philosophy, Religion, and Culture in the Atheism and Christianity program. She recently completed her doctorate at Durham University, examining the interaction of Bonaventure’s theological aesthetics and anthropology in light of contemporary anxieties surrounding the common experience of bodily diminishment. She has just begun work on a new project entitled Jesus Silent in My Soul: The Spiritual Vision of Mother Teresa.

Dr Sarah Gador-Whyte joins the Centre for Biblical and Early Christian Studies in the Modes of Knowing program. She has taught at ACU and UWA, where she was co-Dean of Studies at St George’s College. Her research project will explore dialogue literature and the transformations of Christian self-understanding in Christian communities living now under early Islamic rule. Her Rhetoric and Ideas in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist has recently been published by Cambridge University Press.

Dr Jonathan Zecher also joins the Centre for Biblical and Early Christian Studies in the Modes of Knowing program. Most recently, he taught in the Honors College at the University of Houston. His research project will explore monastic practices and theologies of confession in dialogue with late-antique medicine. He is the author of The Role of Death in the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek Ascetic Tradition (Oxford University Press) and articles on early Christian asceticism.

Welcome to Rachel, Sarah, and Jonathan!

(Image: Albrecht Dürer, 1514, Jerome in his Study)