Current Postgraduate Research

My research aims to move towards the development of a modern Christian theology of wonder today. It begins by tracing to the Patristic preoccupation with curiositas the negativistic assessment of wonder throughout much of the history of Christian theology. Building on Aquinas’ ideal of a ‘virtuous’ wonder, it will remimagine Christian wonder as a kind of active ‘receptivity’ with which Christians are called to partake in the inherent mystery of their faith, a sacramental state of mind attuned to the transcendent ‘more-than-is’ (Maritain) of God’s presence in the world and in the Sacraments of the Church. Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry will be established as displaying the virtue and sacramentality redolent of true Christian wonder and will offer an evocative example of the role Christian art can play in the cultivation and communication of a flourishing theology of wonder today. Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan.

Having grown up in the despair of the Troubles in Co. Down, beside an enigmatic ruined eighth century church, as a united Ireland becomes more likely, I now theorise that the theology and history of the early Irish church is one of the few periods of Irish history which could unite both cultures in Northern Ireland as well as improving our self-esteem as a society.

This manuscript is one of the oldest Irish manuscripts in existence and has international significance as one of the oldest surviving liturgical manuscripts of Europe. This study has the potential to reconstruct the eucharist and veneration of the early Irish church, especially Bangor, responsible for the training of one of the most internationally influential Irishmen of all time: St Columbanus. This project will be multi-disciplinary, applying the disciplines of theology, history, linguistics, liturgics, hagiography and palaeography in order to gauge to what extent early Irish theology could be applied to present-day ecumenics and peace building.

My academic background is archaeology and paleoecology at Queen’s University Belfast (B.A.); and early Irish history, hagiography, linguistics, genealogy and literature at University College Cork (M.A.). Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan.

The challenge to have the gospel heard in the present age is immense. This thesis will explore a question of profound importance for the Church in the present and for its future - the question of ministry and who can minister in the Church. It is a question whose answer will impact upon how the gospel is proclaimed, how discipleship is nurtured, and how the mission to evangelize is carried forward. The thesis will explore questions of ministry, paying particular attention to the ministry of preaching, and a consideration of who may, and who may not, preach today. The theology underpinning these permissions will be explored, critiqued and evaluated to determine if current law and practice might perhaps need to change in light of a deepening theological understanding of ministry. Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan

Focusing on the period from 1869, the year when the Anglican Church of Ireland was disestablished, to 1944, when the celebrated Irish glass producers An Túr Gloine closed their doors, this study will examine the varying depictions of the Virgin Mary during a period in which the far larger Catholic church rose from poverty to wealth and prominence, a number of significant Irish artists began and finished their careers, and independence movements resulted in the partition of the island. Mary is both a fruitful and highly revealing subject matter for the purpose of this study, given both the prolific depictions of her in Christian art and the diverse choices made in portraying her, which allow us insight into understandings of the Bible and faith of artists, patrons and congregations. I completed my BA in Film Studies at the University of Kent in 2013 and my MA in Medieval Studies at the University of York in 2019. I am the recipient of the Provost PhD Award from Trinity College. When I’m not working on my PhD I enjoy photography, Gilbert and Sullivan, and cricket. Supervisor: Prof. David Shepherd

Working in multi-disciplinary fields that centre on the theme of animals in religious contexts. My research builds on my interests of the social configuration of cultures and the importance of religion in shaping the treatment and uses of animals in contemporary society. Animal ethics has been the overarching theme of my academic career, having previously taught the subject for 9 years at undergraduate level. My MA thesis centred on applying utilitarian ethical formulae to the treatment of zoo animal subjects. Ethics, speciesism, anthropology, sociology, the philosophy of human-animal relationships, contemporary and historical human-animal interconnection, animals in religion, animals in art and literature, animal consumption as cultural indicators, paleopathology and zooarchaeology will all feature as part of my future academic trajectory and my current research at Trinity College in the hope of illuminating existential truths concerning human relationships with one another and our non-human animal partners. Supervisor: Prof. Jacob Erickson.

My research examines poetic modalities and potentialities in contemporary theological writing (particularly that of the contemporary American theologian Willie James Jennings), and theological dimensions of poetry and poets working, consciously or unconsciously, to rehabilitate diseased and distorted understandings of intimacy within what Jennings calls Christianity’s social performances. The nature of the distortion is racial and gendered, a diseased understanding of self and other, including understandings of self and land, self and animals, and self and community - in the language of Martin Buber, I-it, instead of I-Thou ways of relating to the not-me, including a divine not-me that people call God. A basic premise of this research is that, without an understanding of the centrality and necessity of intimacy – and the way intimacy has been distorted – Christian theological projects, even those driven by liberationist impulses, are stuck in an endlessly creative, ultimately futile, episodic repositioning. Supervisor: Prof. Siobhan Garrigan.

This research studies the philosophical and theological uses of the concept of analogy by Hans Urs von Balthasar. On the one hand, the philosophical analogy is illustrated in the biblical dynamism between the Old and New Testament, Thomistic metaphysics of the real distinction, Augustinian meta-anthropology and the artistic testimony of the apprehension of being. On the other hand, Balthasar introduces the theological analogy with the famous phrase: ’Christ is the concrete analogy of being’. He explains this type of analogy with the concept of the subsistent unity-in-difference in the Trinitarian life, revelation of Christ and the Church. As a result of a careful examination of these themes separately, this research argues for a necessary (albeit analogous) distinction between the philosophical and theological types of analogy. In our opinion, this contributes to the effervescent scholarly debate on the nature and grace controversy. Supervisor: Dr. Michael Kirwan.

Since the publication of Amoris laetitia in 2016, a number of Catholic theologians, priests and bishops have accused Pope Francis of teaching heresy. The specific concern lies with their reading of the teaching concerning the possible admission of divorced and remarried Catholics to the sacraments - a point which was made in footnote 351 in chapter 8 of Amoris laetitia. They base their claims on the idea that the pope is capable of teaching heresy to the universal Church when he acts outside the infallible teaching mode of ex cathedra definitions. This thesis will show how the fathers of Vatican I stipulated that the council was going to definitively exclude the possibility of a heretical pope by raising St Robert Bellarmine’s opinion on this subject to dogmatic status. The medieval canonists had allowed for the idea of a heretical pope by making a distinction between the Apostolic See itself (the sedes) and the individual popes who preside over the See of Rome (the sedens). If the Apostolic See was in some way differentiated from the series of popes who preside over it, the canonists thought they could assent to the already defined doctrine that the “See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error”, while still allowing for the possibility that an individual pope could teach heresy. In this way, the canonists interpreted Christ’s prayer for the never-failing faith of Peter in Luke 22:32 as being made for the universal Church, rather than the individual successors of Peter. The First Vatican Council countered this argument by following St Robert Bellarmine’s teaching that divine providence would never allow a pope to teach heresy to the universal Church, because of the inherent indefectibility of the entire people of God. The first canon of the dogmatic constitution of the Church Pastor aeternus formally proscribed the distinction between the sedes and the sedens with an anathema by teaching that Christ had established the Church on Peter alone rather than the college of apostles as a whole or the Church in general. Since this distinction was the sole technicality which had allowed for the idea of a heretical pope, this explains how Bellarmine’s position was raised to the “dignity of a dogma”, without the need for a separate solemn definition of the indefectibility of the Apostolic See. This work is funded by the Irish Research Council.

Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan