BA, DPhil
I completed my BA in Philosophy & Theology at the University of Oxford, and then a DPhil, again at Oxford, under the supervision of Brian Davies and Richard Swinburne.
I have held positions at King’s College, London, the University of Glasgow, where I was a Gifford Postdoctoral Research Fellow, the Australian Catholic University, the University of Exeter, and most recently the University of Leeds, where I was Professor of Philosophy and Religion from 2013 to 2020.
I am interested in philosophical theology broadly defined. In recent years, my research has focused upon questions such as: the distinctive character of the goods to which religious and spiritual traditions are directed; the structure of such traditions, including the connection between their practical and creedal commitments; the relationship between the various vocabularies that are used to describe, from the insider’s perspective, progress in the spiritual life; the epistemic significance of tradition in religious contexts; and the relationship between the concept of God and accounts of spiritual well-being.
In general, my research rests on the thought that religious traditions constitute extended experiments in human possibilities – and the belief that in some cases, the careful retrieval of those traditions can throw new light on contemporary questions about how to live well.
Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Conception and Feeling (Cambridge UP, 2005).
Faith and Place: An Essay in Embodied Religious Epistemology (Oxford UP, 2009).
Renewing the Senses: A Study of the Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life (Oxford UP, 2013).
Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues: Living Between Heaven and Earth (Oxford UP, 2020).