ABOUT
Based at Pusey House, the Centre draws upon Oxford’s longstanding and exceptional scholarship in Law and the Humanities, and in particular upon the Catholic tradition as received in the Church of England. The Centre hosts colloquia, lectures, and seminars, and supports scholars and scholarship in the pursuit of truth within the academy, and for the renewal of the Church within a pluralistic civic society.
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The work of the Centre has recently been much extended by the donation of Mr Marek Matraszek.
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Donations can be made online here.
The Centre for Theology, Law, and Culture is an academic institute dedicated to enriching contemporary intellectual and cultural life by a rigorous engagement with Theology and related academic disciplines.
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UPCOMING COLLOQUIA
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​Trinity Term 2024:
Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science, Theology and Metaphysics
Weds 1st - Fri 3rd May, with The Civitas Institute (University of Texas at Austin).
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A colloquium on the significance of 'middle sized' entities in the sciences, metaphysics, and theology.
Participants should be familiar with physics and metaphysics. Applications by graduate students and academics welcome at: pusey.conference@stx.ox.ac.uk.
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Speakers include: George Ellis (Cape Town), Robert Koons (UT Austin), Timothy O'Connor (Indiana), Javier Sánchez Cañizares (Navarra), Vera Hoffmann-Kolss (Bern), Alyssa Ney (UC Davis), Mark Harris (Harris Manchester), Daniel De Haan (Blackfriars & Campion Hall), William Simpson (Pusey House & UT Austin), John Pemberton (Durham & LSE), Philip Goff (Durham), Aaron Cotnoir (St Andrews), Christopher Oldfield (Cambridge), Robert Verrill (Blackfriars Cambridge), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross), and Emily Quershi-Hurst (Pembroke).
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More details about the colloquium can be found here.
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Liberty and Natural Law
Wednesday 15th May, in cooperation with the Revue de Philosophie du Droit.
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This is a one-day Colloquium aimed at graduate students and researchers in Law, Philosophy and Theology, considering the principle of liberty from the perspective of natural law theory. Papers will be published in the Revue de Philosophie du Droit (n° 2/2024). The colloquium is hosted by the Centre for Theology, Law and Culture at Pusey House, and co-sponsored by the Oxford Faculty of Law and the Canterbury Institute.
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Speakers include: Clemente Recabarren (St John’s), Sébastien Neuville (Toulouse), Henri Torrione (Fribourg), Jonathan Price (Pusey House & St Cross), Nathan Helms (Oriel), Dominic Burbidge (Regent’s Park), Arnaud de Solminihac (Paris II Panthéon-Assas), Conor Casey (Surrey). This one-day
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To inquire about attendance, please contact pusey.conference@stx.ox.ac.uk.
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For information about Recollection lectures accompanying the colloquia, click here.
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​Hilary Term 2024:
Intelligences: the Making and Unmaking of Humans.
Thursday 8th February, Exeter College.
A day-long colloquium on God, anthropology, and the revolutionary development of artificial intelligences. It considered the implications of rapidly developing artificial intelligence on philosophies of human personhood, the Christian doctrine of man’s creation in God’s own image, national and international human rights régimes, and the world of the arts.
Speakers included Professor Charles Foster (author of the New York Times bestseller Being a Beast), Iain McGilchrist (author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things), theologians and philosophers of personhood, and an AI bot which will respond to the colloquium’s questions.
Political Theology, Sovereignty, and the Reform of Human Rights Law.
Thursday 29th February, with St John's College.
This colloquium brought together a small group of academics, lawyers and persons from the political world (a) working on possible reforms to domestic human rights law in the context of current political crises, and (b) those working on the constitutional and jurisprudential underpinnings of human rights law in the British context.
Our colloquium brought these topics into a critical conversation with the Christian foundations of human rights doctrines, theologies of human dignity, and the theological groundings of state sovereignty and legislative authority.
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​The keynote address of our Theologians & Contract Law colloquium (Autumn 2021) can be viewed here
RECENT COLLOQUIA
CURRENT SCHOLARS
Dr Jonathan Price
Matraszek Fellow of Pusey House & St Cross College; Faculty of Law (University of Oxford).
Research: Theological origins of modernity; philosophical anthropology; virtue ethics; philosophy of Private Law.
Dr William Simpson
Scholar in Residence at Pusey House. Barry Fellow (Philosophy Dept., Austin, TX), Visiting Fellow in Philosophy (University of Durham), Research Associate (University of Cambridge Cambridge).
Research: philosophy of nature, metaphysics of physics, history and philosophy of science.
Miss Isabelle Heinemann
Researcher at Pusey House.
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Research: Intellectual History; the high middle ages; Dante Alighieri.
The Revd Professor Nigel Biggar CBE
Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Pusey House, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford
Research: follow this link to Prof Biggar's university profile.
Mr Clinton Collister
PhD Candidate in Christian Theology (University of Cambridge)
Research: Theology and Literature; Moral Theology; Systematic Theology
Prof Agnieszka Nogal
Visiting Scholar (Pusey House), Professor at the University of Warsaw (Chair of Political Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy)
Research: human rights; natural rights; the organic metaphor of "political body"; biopolitics.
Dr John Ritzema
Research Fellow at the Pharos Foundation and a Researcher at Pusey House.
Research: Visionary experience and cult in the Hebrew Bible; the Bible and Humanities; Christian theology and the British Constitution.
LECTURES
The Centre coordinates, with the Pusey House Chapter, the Recollection Lecture series: recalling the major themes and thinkers of Christian history.
Recollection lectures take place in the Ursell Room at Pusey House at 4pm generally (unless noted otherwise). Tea and coffee is served in the Hood Room between 3.15 and 3.45pm.
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You can see our lectures, given by scholars including John Finnis and Wim Decock, on our YouTube channel. Follow us to see upcoming series on early modern theology and law, the soul, and moral and political theology, as well as the co-organised Theological Conference on the theme of the work of the Holy Spirit.
SUPPORT & CONTACT
Please consider sponsoring one of our scholars or an upcoming colloquium or lecture series or book discussion group. It is only through the generous support of donors like you that the next generation of Oxford students, as well as interested scholars and policy-makers, might receive ancient wisdom in a setting of Christian life and worship. Donations can be made here.
Alternatively, donations can made by bank transfer with the following details:
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Pusey House Chapel
Barclays Bank
Sort code: 20-65-18
Account no.: 10748455
Reference: Pusey Centre
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For enquiries about the Centre, please contact Dr Jonathan Price at: jonathan.price@stx.ox.ac.uk
​Pusey House, St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LZ