2024-2025 Conferences
2024–2025
Conferences
Autumn 2024 Study Day:
Exploring the Human: Marking the 35 Year Anniversary of Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self
Date, time and location
Saturday 16 November 2024 | 9:30am-4.30pm | St John’s Old Divinity School, Cambridge
Theme and focus
In 2024, it was 35 years since the publication of Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self. Our first-ever study day took this anniversary as a prompt to think about the importance of maintaining a robustly Christian account of the human as both the foundation of good scholarship and the means by which we might meaningfully engage with some of the most pressing academic and cultural discussions about the place of the individual in modernity. We also considered how, in light of the present challenges, we might go about retrieving, or resourcing, Protestant theological anthropology.
The study day aimed to model the practice and ethos of the Forming a Christian Mind Fellows Programme. As such, it differed from our previous conferences in two main ways: firstly, by being smaller in size with spaces limited to those currently carrying out postgraduate study or postdoctoral research; and, secondly, by dedicating extended time to collaborative peer discussion, including through discipline-specific seminars. Participants were asked to read and reflect on two extracts to prepare for the day, one from Sources of the Self and one from their chosen discipline-specific track.
Conference Programme
- Welcome and vision
- Plenary: Introduction to Sources of the Self, Its Context and Significance (Dr Kirsten Birkett)
- Plenary: Resourcing Protestant Anthropology: Living the Good Life (Dr James Eglinton)
- Q&A Session
- Break
- Group Discussion
- Lunch
- Plenary: The Human in 2024 (Aden Cotterill)
- Discipline-Specific Discussion Seminars
- Break
- Plenary and Q&A: Resourcing Protestant Anthropology: Hypergoods (Dr James Eglinton)
- Concluding Remarks
Speakers
Dr Kirsten Birkett
Kirsten Birkett originally trained in science with a PhD in history and philosophy of science. After studying theology in Sydney, she moved to Oak Hill Theological College in London and taught for fourteen years, particularly in philosophy and ethics, obtaining further degrees in higher education and medieval history. She now works in publications for Church Society and will soon be starting a second PhD in emotional conversion in the early church. She has written extensively applying Christian theology to worldview and psychology.
Dr James Eglinton
James Eglinton is the Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh, where he completed his PhD on Dutch dogmatician Herman Bavinck. He has written and co-edited several books on Bavinck and neo-Calvinism, including Bavinck: A Critical Biography (Baker Academic, 2020), as well as co-translating editions of Bavinck's works. He serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology, published by Brill, and has written for The Times, The Herald, The Scotsman, Christianity Today, Modern Reformation, The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Nederlands Dagblad.
Aden Cotterill
Aden Cotterill holds degrees in psychology, philosophy and theology and is currently studying for a PhD at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in the Faculty of Divinity, as a World Universities Ramsay Postgraduate Scholar and an Honorary PhD Scholar at the Woolf Institute. His thesis pursues a theological response to the concept of the nova effect, as articulated in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, with special reference to the Czech theologian and priest Tomáš Halík.
Discipline-Specific Seminars
Natural Sciences
Seminar Leader: Dr Chris Willmott, Honorary Associate Professor and National Teaching Fellow, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, University of Leicester
Seminar Reading: Zachary R. Calo, 'AI, Medicine and Christian Ethics' in Research Handbook on Health, AI and the Law, ed. by Barry Solaiman and I. Glenn Cohen (Edward Elgar, 2024).
Social Sciences
Seminar Leader: Dr Kirsten Birkett, Independent Scholar and Author, Former Ethics and Philosophy Tutor at Oak Hill College
Seminar Reading: Mary Eberstadt, ‘The Great Scattering’ in Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics (Templeton Press, 2019).
Arts and Humanities
Seminar Leader: Andrew Fellows, Former Chairman of L’Abri International, Author, and Pastor at Panton Street Church, Cambridge
Seminar Reading: Carl Trueman, ‘Unacknowledged Legislators: Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake’ in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020).
Philosophy and Theology
Seminar Leader: Aden Cotterill, World Universities Ramsay Postgraduate Scholar and PhD Student in Theology, University of Cambridge
Seminar Reading: John Webster, ‘Eschatology and Anthropology’ in Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Bloomsbury, 2001).
Spring Conference 2025:
Exploring the Human: Teaching, Collaboration, and the Academic Vocation in Light of the Gospel
Date and location
Saturday 22 February | 9:30am-5pm | St John’s Old Divinity School, Cambridge
Theme and focus
How can we be good teachers, colleagues and pastoral mentors, in light of our Christian understanding of what it means to be human? The way we carry out those responsibilities can be shaped primarily by the default in our particular department. But how can we let Scripture and specifically an evangelical understanding of what it means to be human shape our interactions with others in the university?
How does that view of the human impact our view of teaching, the way we relate to our supervisors, and how we navigate departmental politics? And how can we also make use of opportunities in our everyday professional academic work to share the gospel with our colleagues and students?
Our Spring Conference continued our theme for the 2024-2025 academic year of ‘Exploring the Human‘. It was vocational in its focus, examining how our commitment to a robustly Christian account of the human might shape our attitude to our teaching, pastoral, and collegial responsibilities.
Conference Programme
- Welcome and vision
- Plenary lecture (Prof Brad Green)
- Plenary lecture (Prof Karen Coats)
- Break
- Plenary lecture (Prof Cecilia Brassett)
- Q&A session
- Lunch
- Plenary lecture (Prof Brad Green)
- Plenary lecture (Dr Zachary Ardern)
- Discipline-specific workshops
- Panel discussion
- Concluding remarks
Speakers
Prof Karen Coats
Prof Karen Coats is Director of the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Human Sciences from George Washington University, and taught at Illinois State University for over twenty years prior to her appointment at Cambridge. She is the co-editor of six essay collections and author of three books on literature for young readers, including The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2017), which offers a comprehensive introduction to the history, forms, genres, and theoretical concerns of youth literature. She is the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and has been a research fellow at two Seminars in Christian Scholarship at Calvin College, Michigan.
Prof Bradley G. Green
Prof Brad Green is Professor of Theological Studies at Union University, Tennessee, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He holds a PhD from Baylor University, Texas, and is the author of several books, including The Gospel and the Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life (Crossway, 2010), and Covenant and Commandment: Works, Obedience, and Faithfulness in the Christian Life (IVP Academic, 2015). He helped found Augustine School, a Christian liberal arts school in Jackson, Tennessee. He is also Senior Contributor for The Imaginative Conservative, and has served as Writer-In-Residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge.
Prof Cecilia Brassett
Prof Cecilia Brassett is Teaching Professor of Human Anatomy and University Clinical Anatomist at the University of Cambridge, having previously practised as a general surgeon. She is a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is the Director of Studies for the second year of the Medical Sciences tripos, as well as an Undergraduate Tutor and Deputy Senior Tutor. Her research interests include topics relating to the gastrointestinal tract and musculoskeletal system. She is the co-author of The Secret Language of Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Origins of Anatomical Terms (North Atlantic Books, 2017). She is a Councillor of the Anatomical Society and of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists, and a Fellow and MRCS Examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons.
Dr Zachary Ardern
Dr Zachary Ardern is a postdoctoral fellow in evolutionary genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge. His studies in biology and philosophy were at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and he previously conducted research at the Technical University of Munich and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. His scientific research investigates the evolution and functions of young genes in bacteria and viruses, and he regularly speaks and writes on the relationship between biology, philosophy, and Christian faith.
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