This event is hybrid. When you reserve your spot, please indicate how you will be attending.

Seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis. Once you confirm your attendance via the below link you will receive an Outlook calendar invite from HASS@exeter.ac.uk

Date: 12 February 2024
Time: 16:00 - 17:00 (followed by a drinks reception)
Location: Streatham Campus, Queens Building, LT1

"(How) Can we Change our Worlds? Doing Theology Otherwise"

Academic theology might seem at best a luxury and at worse an unjustifiable indulgence in light of the current political and ecological crises we all face. However, theology points to the possibility for things to be otherwise, representing a refusal to accept any ideology as the last word. In this lecture, drawing on my research in constructive and queer theologies, I reflect on what principles of transformation, rather than restoration, mean for my discipline, for the academy, and for institutions more widely. I ask in whose interests is it for us to believe that there is no possible alternative to the way things currently are, and show that theology’s vocation is to turn assumptions and hierarchies on their heads.

Professor Susannah Cornwall

I joined the then Department of Theology and Religion at Exeter in 2013 as Advanced Research Fellow in Theology and Religion under the HASS research strategy, as part of the Identities and Beliefs strand. In 2014 I became the new Director of EXCEPT (Exeter Centre for Ethics and Practical Theology). In 2016 I became Lecturer, in 2018 Senior Lecturer, and in 2020 Associate Professor in Theology and Religion. In 2021 I was awarded a personal chair in Constructive Theologies.

During this time I led projects including “Modelling Transgender Spiritual Care: Spiritual Care Framework for People Undergoing Gender Transition”, funded by the Sir Halley Stewart Trust, and “Practice, Activism and Advocacy in Academic Research on Religion, Gender and Sexuality”, funded by the British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award. This fed into my REF 2021 impact case study, “Improving Policy, Practice and Understanding of Trans Identity, Intersex Characteristics, and Sexuality in Religious and Healthcare Organisations”.

From 2011 to 2013 I was Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester, where I led the “Intersex, Identity and Disability: Issues for Public Policy, Healthcare and the Church” project, funded by the Lincoln Theological Institute.

Prior to 2011 I held short-term research assistant and support tutor posts for the South West Ministry Training Course and the then Department of Theology and Religion. I held British Academy funding for a small research project, “Readings from the Road”, on contextual Bible study with homeless and vulnerably-housed people. I taught Philosophy and Religious Studies at Exeter College, Richard Huish College, and Sherborne School for Girls, alongside my postgraduate studies at Exeter.

My PhD (2007) was funded by the Government of Jersey (then States of Jersey) Department of Education. It focused on theological and ethical critiques of the early corrective surgery paradigm for children born with intersex characteristics.

HASS Inaugural Lecture - Professor Susannah Cornwall