Who's who at Pusey House
The Principal
The Rev'd Dr George Westhaver joined Pusey House in August, 2013. He grew up near Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the East coast of Canada. He studied philosophy and anthropology at McGill University, Montreal, and International Development Studies at St Mary's University in Halifax. He then read for a Master of Divinity degree at Wycliffe College, one of the member colleges of the Toronto School of Theology.
After ordination in 1997 George served in Cherry Hinton with Teversham and in the Ramseys and Upwood (Diocese of Ely), before moving to Oxford as Chaplain of Lincoln College and Assistant Minister at St Michael at the North Gate. His last post was Rector of St George’s Round Church, Halifax, in Nova Scotia. George completed a PhD at the University of Durham under the supervision of Professor Andrew Louth, on E. B. Pusey’s unpublished lectures, ‘Types and Prophecies of the Old Testament’. His research interests include E. B. Pusey and the Oxford Movement, the allegorical interpretation of the Bible, and the artistic expression of Christian doctrine. George is married to Karen and they have two daughters, Clara and Charlotte. |
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The Chaplain
The Rev'd Mark Stafford joined Pusey House in September 2014. After graduating from Liverpool University in Modern Languages, and from National Circus Schools in Paris and Bristol, he spent the best part of a decade as a Circus Performer, before running away from the Circus to join the Church. Mark trained for Ordination at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, and has served as Assistant Curate in the Parish of St. Barnabas and St. Paul, Jericho, and as Junior Chaplain at Merton College, since being ordained. Before coming to Oxford, Mark was the founder and Director of the Youth Charity 'redthread', and lists among his interests football, duelling weapons of the 18th Century, and Group Analytic Psychotherapy. He is currently part-way through an MA in one of these disciplines. He is married to Lizzie, who is a Research Nurse - they have two young children, and are both studying the effects of chronic sleeplessness on the human nervous system.
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The Librarian
Anna James became librarian and archivist of Pusey House at Christmas 2014, moving all the way across the road from the Angus Library at Regent’s Park College, where she worked as antiquarian cataloguer on historic Baptist collections. Before this, she worked in a variety of roles at Lambeth Palace Library for 8 years, mostly focusing on the historic library of Sion College. Anna studied for both her Masters in Library and Information Studies (2007) and her undergraduate degree in Classics (2003) at University College London. She edited the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals’ (Cilip) Library and Information History Group newsletter from 2014-2017, and has a chronic dependency on social media.
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The Steward (Karen Westhaver)
Master of Music
Maks Adach came up to Oxford in 2012, having completed a foundation year in Organ, Composition and Continuo studies at Trinity College of Music, London. During that year he was also Organ Scholar of the Old Royal Naval College Chapel. Maks read for a BA in Music as Organ Scholar of Oriel College. In Michaelmas 2013, he became Organist of Pusey House before becoming Master of the Music a year later. He strives to uphold the musical excellence of the house, furnishing the liturgies with an eclectic selection of choral and organ music. In addition to his duties at Pusey, he has been Assistant Organist of Exeter College and Director of the Chapel Choir at St John’s College. He is also Junior Dean of Somerville College where he is responsible for the welfare and discipline of both Junior and Middle members of the College.
Academically, Maks is reading for a post-graduate degree in Musicology and his research interests include Laude Spirituale, the music of Hebert Howells, and the liturgical music of pre-reformation England. Maks is a prize winning Associate of the Royal College of Organists (Durrant, Sawyer, Wookey prizes) and an Associate of Trinity College London. |
Assistant to the Master of Music
Matthew F. Reese is an American conductor, cellist, and tenor, active on both sides of the Atlantic. A recent recipient of Oxford’s prestigious conducting prize, Matthew is the Music Director of the Oxford University Philharmonia, as well as the emerging chamber orchestra, Consortium Novum. In 2016, he was named the University’s inaugural ‘Conducting Scholar’, assisting Maestro John Traill and the St. Anne’s Camerata.
Matthew has studied conducting under the Celibidache student, Angel Gil-Ordóñez (PostClassical), under Paul Spicer (Finzi Singers), Akiko Fujimoto (San Antonio Symphony), and the Haydn scholar, James Armstrong (William & Mary). Equally at home in the choir stalls, Matthew currently sings with the Choir of Queen’s College, Oxford, and as a Deputy Lay Clerk at Washington National Cathedral. He also serves as Assistant Master of the Music at Pusey House, conducting one of Oxford’s premier mixed-voice chamber choirs. Matthew earned his B.A. magna cum laude with High Honours in Music from America’s second-oldest university, The College of William & Mary (1693). He also holds an M.Phil in Musicology from the University of Oxford, where he is currently a doctoral candidate in music. |
Secretary of the Friends
Ann Chippindale was born in Accrington, Lancashire. She moved south to read Chemistry at New College Oxford remaining there until 1998, first as a doctoral student and then Research Fellow. Her research interests lie in solid-state inorganic chemistry and crystallography. Ann is Secretary to the Friends of Pusey House and a Vice President of the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith. When not addressing envelopes and washing up at Pusey, she is tutor in Inorganic Chemistry at Worcester and Pembroke Colleges in Oxford and Reader in Solid-State Chemistry at the University of Reading.
The Sacristan
Jan Nedvidek was born in Prague, the Czech Republic, and is a well-travelled man of the Continent. Having completed his secondary education in the UK, he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford (matric 2013). Whilst at Christ Church, he worked as the College Sacristan in the Cathedral and as a verger during the holidays. Jan is currently studying for the Graduate Diploma in Law, and holds an offer to work as a solicitor in the City of London. As Sacristan, Jan strives to uphold Pusey’s reputation for offering beautiful, well-ordered services, whilst helping to welcome new people into this holy place. His interests include rowing, politics, and Russian literature, particularly Lermontov and Dostoyevsky.
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The Assistant Sacristan
Sam Maginnis joined Pusey House in September 2015, though his links with Oxford go back to 2004 when he first entered Magdalen College as an undergraduate law student. After taking the LLM at University College London he trained as a barrister and spent some time in The Hague interning at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Several years of work – firstly in private litigation practice, then at the Competition & Markets Authority – followed, yet despite Sam’s love of terrorising bullies and wrongdoers his growing sense of vocation drew him away from legal London to the West Midlands, where he spent last year as pastoral assistant to an urban parish in Tipton, near Dudley. Sam is looking forward to deepening his theological and liturgical knowledge whilst at Pusey House, and to offering support and encouragement to others whose spiritual journeys have brought them to this special place.
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Chapel Intern
James Roberts joined Pusey House in September 2016. James was born and raised in rural Herefordshire but, before coming to Pusey, was working in Belgium as a pastoral assistant to the Anglican chaplaincy in Ghent. This followed his studies at the University of St Andrews, where he read theology and developed an interest in modern theology. James is exploring vocation in the Church of England and he is looking forward to immersing himself in the liturgical tradition of Pusey House over the coming year.
Chapel Intern
Daniel Matore read for a BA in English at Homerton College, Cambridge from 2008-2011, where he won the Betha Wolferstan Rylands Prize, and graduated with a double first. He proceeded to complete his MPhil in Criticism and Culture at King’s College, Cambridge, specialising in the work of Gertrude Stein, Basil Bunting, and Ezra Pound. He worked at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon between 2012 and 2013 as a lecteur d’anglais, where he supervised French undergraduates on a variety of modern British and American writers and gave classes on literary translation. Since 2013 he has been a doctoral student at New College, Oxford, where he is researching a thesis entitled ‘Experimental Typography in 20th-Century Poetry’ under the supervision of Dr Rebecca Beasley; he has also held various supervisory roles at several Oxford colleges. In 2015, he was awarded a Jean Nordell Fellowship by the Houghton Library, Harvard University in order to conduct three months of archival research. He is the Editor of the Cambridge Humanities Review, and articles on notation, recording, optics, and verse will be appearing in the journals Textual Practice and Modernism/modernity over the next couple of years. He is particularly interested in the intersection between theology and other branches of the humanities, the Oxford Movement, liturgical history, and the rhetoric of sermons.
