Ecologies of Care

The conference will use theological anthropology to explore the relationality, ‘the ecologies of care’, which allow mental health care professionals and clergy to thrive. We use the language of ‘ecologies of care’ in an attempt to step outside of dualistic descriptions of relationships that rely on an active-passive binary in which the mental health care professional/priest is active and the patient/parishioner is a passive recipient of care. The conference will develop an explicitly theological analysis of the relationality which allows both vocations to thrive, rooting an account of this relationality in a theological anthropology. As the conference progresses speakers will explore the barriers to the development of this kind of relationality. In doing so our hope remains constructive, recognising that diagnosis is often the first act of the physician. Finally, the conference will explore how ecologies of care might flourish amidst compromised systems. Drawing on the image of Israel in a ‘strange land’ (Ps. 137) and Jeremiah’s exhortation for Israel to plant gardens in exile (Jer. 29:35), speakers will reflect on how ecologies of care can be cultivated in a strange land. 

Confirmed Speakers include:

Ed Chan-Stroud is a Research Fellow in Christian Ethics at Oxford University and an ordinand in the Church of England. He works across psychology and theology to investigate how liturgical practices shape the experience of mental health. 

Joanna Collicutt is a clinical neuropsychologist and psychologist of religion based at Harris Manchester College, and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, Oxford University. She is also an assistant priest in an Oxfordshire parish.

Matthew Croasmun is Senior Lecturer of Divinity and Humanities at Yale University and Director of the Life Worth Living program at the Yale Centre for Faith & Culture. He is an ordained Vineyard pastor.

Susan Eastman is associate research emerita professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School and is ordained in the Episcopal Church. Her research explores the formation and transformation of identity in the letters of Paul, in conversation with current work issues of human flourishing in science, psychology, and medical ethics.

Isabelle Hamley is Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, an Anglican priest, and an ambassador for Sanctuary Mental Health UK. She has written extensively on questions of justice, violence and otherness as well as theological anthropology, focusing especially on spirituality, scripture and mental health

Warren Kinghorn is Esther Colliflower Professor of the Practice of Pastoral and Moral Theology as well as Professor of Psychiatry, jointly appointed across Duke Divinity School and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences of Duke University Medical Centre. 

Daniel Maughan is a Consultant Psychiatrist for the Early Intervention Service for Oxfordshire and Honorary Member of Oxford University Department of Psychiatry. He has taught Pastoral Psychology and Pastoral Care at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University since 2020.

Teresa Morgan is McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale University and an Anglican priest.

John Swinton is Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies at Aberdeen University, a former Registered Mental Health Nurse, and a minister in the Church of Scotland.

Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University. He researches topics at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies

For further detail please contact edward.stroud@kellogg.ox.ac.uk