The Centre for Theology, Law, & Culture
An overview.
About
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.
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.
The work of the Centre has recently been much extended by the generous donation of Mr Marek Matraszek.
Donations can be made online here.
The Centre's Director is Dr Jonathan Price, the Matraszek Fellow of Pusey House & St Cross College, University of Oxford.
Please see the 'Lectures' and 'Conferences' tabs on this website's banner to see the full range of our upcoming events, or consult our termcard.
Events
The Centre works within Pusey House to help organise academic events which bring together academics, students, clergy, public servants, and the general public.
Upcoming events
Confession: The Church’s Gift to the World?
Wednesday, 25 February 2026
This colloquium will gather an ecumenical array of speakers from these different traditions to consider some of the pastoral challenges and contemporary issues that are being faced by clergy today in the ministry of hearing confessions, and by the Church and Christians more generally. This will include, among other concerns, how confession relates to the commitment to safeguarding and the protection of the vulnerable, to the inviolability of the seal, and to the wider significance of confession in a culture that preaches tolerance without practicing forgiveness. The colloquium includes a public lecture at 4pm on Wednesday 25th February by The Rev'd Fr Ben Jefferies on ‘Dr. Pusey on the Effects of Absolution: Catholic but not Roman’. More details available here.
A Genealogy of Post-Liberalism
Wednesday, 4 March 2026
This afternoon mini-colloquium will consider the following questions:
What is 'post-liberalism'?
What is the origin of this idea?
And how can we better understand our own political moment by grasping the genealogy of this idea?
João Pinheiro da Silva (University of St. Andrews) and Jacob Williams (Oxford) will introduce their essay, 'Postliberalism: A Genealogy' (Telos, no. 212, 2025), why they wrote it, and what its thesis is.
There will be two respondents: Professor John Milbank (University of Nottingham) and Professor Paul Kelly (LSE), author of Against Postliberalism: Why 'Family, Faith and Flag' is a Dead End for the Left (Polity, 2025). More details available here.
Christian Revival: Our Post-Liberal Hope?
Wednesday, 11 March 2026
The long post-war consensus in the West—politically defined by liberal democracy, economically by globalisation, and morally by a shared repudiation of past horrors—has broken down.
In its place, a new cultural and moral moment is emerging. In this post-liberal moment, a trans-denominational Christian restoration is gathering force—intellectually, spiritually, and culturally. The work of various contemporary thinkers, such as Rod Dreher, Paul Kingsnorth, and Iain McGilchrist, point toward a renewal that is not merely reactionary but creative: a re-enchantment of the world through the recovery of Christian metaphysics—not as private consolation, but as public truth. This conference will gather some of the leading voices in this emerging renewal to ask:
· What form is this Christian re-enchantment taking?
· How should faith engage political life in a disenchanted world?
· What does it mean to be Christian after secularism?
· Can the Christian tradition not only criticise but also lead?
In doing so, we aim to connect Eastern and Western Christian traditions in common cause, and to investigate the appropriate relationship between Church and State in the post-liberal context.
The conference will also seek to articulate strategies for advancing Christian cultural and institutional renewal in this new and unsettled era.
Click here to view the dedicated page for this conference. Please check it regularly for more news about confirmed speakers.
Past events
Liberty and Natural Law
15 May 2024
in cooperation with the Revue de Philosophie du Droit.
This was 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 were subsequently published in the Revue de Philosophie du Droit (n° 2/2024). The colloquium was 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.
Speakers included: 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).
For information about Recollection lectures accompanying the colloquia, click here.
Why Middle-Sized Matters to Science, Theology and Metaphysics
1 May 2024
In conjunction with the Civitas Institute, UT-Austin
Held at All Souls' College, University of Oxford
A colloquium on the significance of 'middle sized' entities in the sciences, metaphysics, and theology. Participants should be familiar with physics and metaphysics.
Speakers included: 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).
More details about the colloquium can be found here.
Political Theology, Sovereignty, and the Reform of Human Rights Law.
29 February 2024
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.
Lectures
The Centre works with the Principal and Chapter to co-ordinate the House's flagship 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.
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 and 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:
Pusey House Chapel
Barclays Bank
Sort code: 20-65-18
Account no.: 10748455
Reference: Pusey Centre
For enquiries about the Centre, please contact Dr Jonathan Price at: jonathan.price@stx.ox.ac.uk
Pusey House, St Giles', Oxford, OX1 3LZ
Who we are
The centre's current scholars.
Dr Jonathan Price
Research:
Theological origins of modernity; philosophical anthropology; virtue ethics; philosophy of Private Law.
Dr Ryan Blank
Research:
Modern British History, Ecclesiastical History, History of Intimacies, History of Masculinities.
Dr Clinton Collister
Research:
Theology and Literature; Moral Theology; Systematic Theology.
Miss Isabelle Heinemann
Research:
Intellectual History; the high middle ages; Dante Alighieri.
Mr Phillip Quinn
Research:
philosophical theology (especially in connection with moral theology); analytic theology; late antique philosophy and theology, patristic philosophy
Dr William Simpson
Research:
Philosophy of nature, metaphysics of physics, history and philosophy of science.
The Revd Professor Nigel Biggar CBE
Research:
Please follow this link to Prof Biggar's university profile.
Dr Mehmet Ciftci
Research:
Political theology; the intersection of liturgy and ethics; constitutionalism in the Commonwealth realms.
Dr Euan Grant
Research:
Contemporary interpretation of scholastic theology; the theology of human nature.
Prof Agnieszka Nogal
Research:
Human rights; natural rights; the organic metaphor of "political body"; biopolitics.
Dr John Ritzema
Research:
Visionary experience and cult in the Hebrew Bible; the Bible and Humanities; Christian theology and the British Constitution.
Miss Matti Veldhuis
Research:
Plato and the will, Platonic metaphysics, Persianate Neoplatonism.
