Dr Fáinche Ryan

Associate Professor in Systematic Theology

Loyola Institute, School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies

t: +353 1 8964791

Fáinche Ryan, Director of the Loyola Institute from 2016 to 2020, was elected Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2019. She was President of the Irish Theological Association from 2010 to 2016. In 2023 she was elected Vice-President of the European Society of Catholic Theology and will succeed as President from 2025. Previously she was Tutor in Theology at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, and an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. From 2008 – 2013 she lectured at Mater Dei Institute, Dublin City University.

She published her doctorate work, completed at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Rome, in the prestigious series of the Thomas Instituut te Utrecht with the title Formation in Holiness Thomas Aquinas on Sacra doctrina (Peeters, Louvain 2007).

Her research and teaching interests include:

- The theology of Thomas Aquinas

- Issues in ecclesiology - ministry, ecclesial leadership, eucharistic theology, the sensus fidei, the ecclesial role of women

- The virtue of truth telling in a so-called ‘post-truth’ era

- The theology of the early Irish church, in particular the Book of Kells.

RESEARCH