Director

The Reverend Dr Jennifer Strawbridge is Associate Professor in New Testament Studies at Oxford and Caird Fellow in Theology at Mansfield College. Mthr Jenn has published on the letters of Paul in the early Church, as well as early Christian inscriptions, teaching, education, and doctrine, including her monograph The Pauline Effect (De Gruyter 2015). More widely, Jenn serves as a Vocations Advisor in the Diocese of Oxford; a governor for her local primary school and at Ripon College, Cuddesdon; and Associate Priest at St Andrew’s, Headington. She was also recently appointed as a Wiccamical Canon at Chichester Cathedral. Before taking up her current post, Jenn served as Chaplain of Keble College, and was Associate Rector, Priest-in-Charge, and curate at parishes in Connecticut and Virginia, USA. 

General Editor

The Reverend Dr Jarred Mercer is Associate Chaplain and postdoctoral researcher at Merton College, Oxford and an assistant curate at St Mary Magdalen, Oxford. He has published in early Christian and constructive theology and his first book, on Hilary of Poitiers, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. He is currently researching the spirituality of children in late antiquity, and co-editing an introduction to theology. Fr Jarred believes that theology is primarily for the enrichment of the Church and the benefit of all society, meaning it belongs as much in the pulpit, the pub, and the public square as it does in the university lecture hall. His interests include music, politics, books, walking, books, rock climbing, theatre, and books. He is married to Chelsea and they have three young children. 

Web Editor

The Reverend Dr Jonathan Jong is an assistant curate at St Mary Magdalen, Oxford. An experimental psychologist by training, Fr Jonathan is also a Research Fellow at Coventry University; a Research Associate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, and St Benet's Hall, Oxford; and an Associate Editor at the open-access science journal PLOS One. He also teaches science and religion and psychology of religion for the Faculty of Theology and Religion, Oxford. His first book, Death Anxiety and Religious Belief (Bloomsbury 2016), was co-authored with Jamin Halberstadt; he is now working on a book about what experimental psychology can tell us about religion. His favourite things include dinosaurs, fountain pens, headphones, podcasts, and Islay single malts. 

Contributing Editors

The Revd Dr Peter Groves is Vicar of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, an Honorary Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and a Senior Research Fellow in Theology at Worcester College, Oxford. He was previously Chaplain and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Fr Peter has been a member of the Oxford Theology Faculty for eighteen years, and teaches modern theology and the history of doctrine. He is the author of Grace (Canterbury 2013) and editor, with John Barton, of The New Testament and the Church (Bloomsbury 2015), and has also published on systematic and doctrinal theology, as well as on the Oxford Movement and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. His current projects include a catechetical introduction to Christian doctrine, and a study of theology and identity in The Godfather movies. His enthusiasms include wine, poetry, Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, Wagner, Wittgenstein, and Queens Park Rangers football club. 

Currently Chaplain of Lincoln College, Oxford, the Reverend Dr Melanie Marshall was a curate in west London after a stint at Westcott House and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Mthr Mel is a classicist by training with a doctorate on Roman epic and historiography. She's currently working on a book called Questions Children Ask about God (And How To Answer them). She spends a lot of time at the opera, and regularly writes programme notes for the Royal Opera House, and otherwise is to be found reading poetry, looking at paintings (Velazquez for preference) and sitting around chatting to people, often under the name of 'work'. Preaching is her absolute favourite thing to do. 

The Revd Professor Judith Brown is an academic historian with a particular research interest in modern India, has published widely in this field, including biographical studies of Gandhi (Yale 1991) and Nehru (Yale 2003), Modern India (Oxford 1994) on the emergence of India as one of the world's largest democracies, and Global South Asians (Cambridge 2006) on the making of a global South Asian diaspora.  She has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, and Oxford, where she was Beit Professor of Commonwealth History and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College. She retired from teaching in 2011, but still regularly gives public lectures. She assists in Balliol chapel as well as at St Mary Magdalen's, and was in 2017 interim chaplain at Brasenose College.

The Reverend Dr Simon Cuff is a Tutor and Lecturer in Theology at St Mellitus College. He studied Philosophy and Theology and Jewish Studies at Oxford University. His doctoral research was on the reception of Scripture in recent philosophy and critical theory. He served his curacy in, and was latterly Interim Priest-in-Charge of, a busy parish in Ealing Broadway in west London. Fr Simon has a long association with the craft of community organising through its UK home, Citizens UK and as a Fellow of the Centre for Theology and Community. Through this engagement with organising, he has participated in the Living Wage campaign and alongside migrants and refugees through work with MigrantsOrganise and Safe Passage. He has a keen interest in Catholic Social Teaching, sacramental theology and evangelism, and the use of Scripture in systematic theology and political thought. 

The Reverend Dr Angus Ritchie is the Director of the Centre for Theology and Community, which he founded with a Roman Catholic colleague in 2005. For two decades, Fr Angus has served in parishes in east London involved in community organising, and is currently at St George-in-the-East. Angus’s books include Prayer and Prophecy: A Ken Leech Reader (co-edited with David Bunch; DLT 2009) and From Metaphysics to Morals: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments (OUP 2012). He also writes a weekly Church Times column reflecting on the Sunday lectionary readings.