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Associates & Consultants

Associates

bernardbeattynewBernard Beatty is Senior Fellow in the School of English at Liverpool University. From 1988-2005 he was Editor of the Byron Journal. He is the author of Byron’s ‘Don Juan’, Byron and the Limits of Fiction (with Vincent Newey), Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron (with Charles Robinson), and The Plays of Lord Byron (with Robert Gleckner). His other published essays are on the Bible, poetry and the Bible, literary theory and theology, Bunyan, Dryden, Rochester, Dickens, and most of the Romantics. He plays the organ and lives in Chester, England.

ianbradleynewProf. Ian Bradley is Professor Emeritus in Cultural and Spiritual History. He teaches and publishes in the areas of Scottish spirituality, hymnody, liturgy, pilgrimage, the spirituality of water, nineteenth-century music, and theology and popular culture (including the only University course in the world on the theology of musical theatre). He welcomes applications for postgraduate research on aspects of hymnody and church music, musical theatre and operetta, pilgrimage and Scottish spirituality.

Prof. Natalie Carnes is a constructive theologian invested in questions that cross the fields of aesthetics, feminism, and systematics. Her projects include Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia and Attunement: The Art and Politics of Feminist Theology. She trained at Harvard, University of Chicago, and Duke before coming to Baylor, where she is Professor of Theology in the Religion Department, Affiliate faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Director of the Baylor Initiative in Christianity and the Arts.

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Dr Michael Downes has been Director of Music at the University of St Andrews since 2008, having previously studied and lectured at the universities of Cambridge and Sussex. His research interests include contemporary music, nineteenth and twentieth-century French music, and opera and musical theatre. He is interested in the expression of religious and spiritual ideas in music: his first book (published by Ashgate in 2009) deals with two works by Jonathan Harvey which set Indian religious texts. As a conductor, Michael has premiered numerous works by young British composers with the Bergamo Ensemble, a London-based group which he founded in 1999; since moving to Scotland, he has established St Andrews Opera and has become the musical director of the St Andrews Chorus. He is a regular reviewer of music books for the Times Literary Supplement, and frequently lectures on music and opera for organisations including the Royal Opera House.

williamhylandDr William Hyland is Lecturer in Church History at St Mary’s College. He specializes in Medieval Church history, with a particular focus on monasticism and spirituality. Dr Hyland is President of the editorial board of the book series Premonstratensian Texts and Studies (Cistercian Publications), and author of Custody of the Heart: Selected Spiritual Writings of Abbot Martin Veth, OSB. He welcomes enquiries for PhD supervision in the following areas: medieval monastic spirituality; the influence of Christian monasticism on the wider culture; connections between monastic spirituality and the arts.

Prof. Paul Mealor, composer, was catapulted to international attention in April 2011, when 2.5 billion people heard his Motet, ‘Ubi caritas’ performed at the Royal Wedding Ceremony of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. It since topped the classical singles charts all over the world. In July 2011, Mealor signed to Decca Records and in December 2011 his song ‘Wherever You Are’ for Gareth Malone’s Military Wives became the Christmas No 1. His music is primarily for choir and almost always settings of sacred texts. Mealor won two Classic Brit Awards and was voted Classic FM’s favourite living composer. He is a Vice-President of the Llangollen International Eisteddfod and President of Ty Cerdd – the National Centre for Music in Wales as well as being Patron of the Welsh Music Guild and of the North East of Scotland Music School. He is Professor of Composition at the University of Aberdeen.

Dr. Giuseppe Pezzini is Senior Lecturer in Latin at the University of St Andrews, which he joined in 2016 after research fellowships at Magdalen College, Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He holds a BA and an MA in Classics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin, and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern, including above all Tolkien’s views on the ‘mystery of literary creation’. He is a member of the RSE Young Academy Scotland, the Young Academy of Europe, and a collaborator of the Meeting of Rimini and the London Encounter, for which he has curated exhibitions on John Henry Newman (2011, 2014), Oscar Wilde (2015) and JRR Tolkien (2020).

Professor Michael Symmons Roberts is an award-winning British poet, writer and broadcaster. His poetry has won the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and been shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He has received major awards from the Arts Council and the Society of Authors. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the English Association.

His continuing collaboration with composer (and part-time ITIA faculty) James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission – ‘The Sacrifice’ – won the RPS Award for opera, and their Royal Opera House / Scottish Opera commission – ‘Clemency’ – was nominated for an Olivier Award. His broadcast work includes the BBC4 verse film ‘Men Who Sleep in Cars,’ which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and ‘Last Words’ commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Dr Benjamin Shute (DMA, BM, New England Conservatory; Diplom K.A., Hochschule für Musik Freiburg) has enjoyed a multifaceted musical career. He has performed internationally on modern and period violin as concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and ensemble leader.His compositions have been performed at venues including the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, and his Adoramus for solo violin is currently a finalist for the 2023 American Prize in composition. Musicological publications include the book Sei Solo: Symbolum? The Theology of J. S. Bach’s Solo Violin Works as well as critical editions, reconstructions, and historically informed transcriptions. An Associate Teacher at the University of St Andrews Music Centre, he previously held full- and part-time posts at various American universities, where he taught violin, chamber music, composition, and a range of courses in music history, theory, and literature.

Consultants

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Prof. Jeremy Begbie
Thomas A. Langford Research Professor
Duke Divinity School, Duke University

philipeslernew2Prof. Philip Esler
Portland Chair of New Testament Studies
University of Gloucestershire

ohearProf. Anthony O’Hear
Professor of Philosophy
University of Buckingham

jolyonProf. Jolyon Mitchell
Principal
St John’s College, Durham University

williamsProf. Rowan Williams
Honorary Fellow
Magdalene College, Cambridge

wolterstorffProf. Nicholas Wolterstorff
Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology
Yale University

On West Sands © R M Dyer
On West Sands © R M Dyer

Contact us

School of Divinity
St Mary's College
St Andrews
KY16 9JU
Fife, Scotland, UK

Phone: +44 (0)1334 462850