I am Professor of Continental Philosophy of Religion, having worked in an academic role at Hope since 2008. 

I was born in Walsall, in the West Midlands, and was the first of my family to go to university. I studied Theology at Cambridge, before spending a year In Liverpool working as an assistant at St Columba’s church in Anfield. I returned to Cambridge for my PhD, a study of the Danish religious philosopher Kierkegaard. I trained for ordination as a priest in the Church of England, working I parishes in Cambridge and Sheffield before returning to Liverpool.

My books include Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God (Ashgate, 2001); Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Introduction (SPCK, 2007); Derrida and Theology (T & T Clark, 2009) and Kierkegaard and the Refusal of Transcendence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) as well as four edited collections.  I’m increasingly drawn to Romantic philosophy and what we can learn from it about reimagining our relationship with nature and the more-than-human world. In recognition of my contribution to the field, I am a Fellow of the prestigious Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and Patron of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals. 

As well as working at Hope, I am Assistant Priest at Liverpool parish church (Our Lady and St Nicholas) and a member of the Sodality of Mary, a dispersed community of priests in the Anglo-catholic tradition. My non-academic work includes writing works of inclusive liturgy and poetry. I have completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, gaining a distinction.