Staff

If you are at the Durham campus or Queen's Campus, Stockton, dial the last five digits of the phone number. From outside the UK, the number is +44 191 33 and the last five digits.

Professor Philip Sheldrake

Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religion

Telephone: 0191 33 43694

Contact (email at philip.sheldrake@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

I have been in Durham as William Leech Professorial Fellow in Applied Theology since January 2003. This is a research chair in the area of theology and society - in my case focusing specially on the public dimensions of spirituality (to be published as Spirituality in Public by OUP) and on spirituality in relation to cities, combining historical, theological and urban studies perspectives (provisionally titled A spiritual city? The sacred, memory and city-making). My academic training was in history, philosophy and theology at the universities of Oxford and London and I have a long-standing interest in the history and theology of Christian spirituality, in later medieval Church history, constructive theology and ecumenical studies.

Spirituality has been a research interest of a number of members of the Department (listed on the website under the subject area, Study of Spirituality) and I am currently working collaboratively to make this dimension a more developed subject at graduate and doctoral levels. There is already a module in our Departmental MA and I supervise several doctoral students in the field. In particular, I am working with several members of the Department and others in the university and related institutions to set up a specialist institute for the study of spirituality and society. The aim is to create a major focus in the United Kingdom for interdisciplinary study and research in spirituality that will bring together theology, history and the social sciences. I am happy to be in contact with people who are interested in graduate or doctoral studies in any aspect of spirituality.

Beyond Durham I have been an Honorary Professor at the University of Wales Lampeter since 1999 and am also regularly a Visiting Professor at the University of Notre Dame and at Boston College. I have also held senior fellowships or been a visiting professor at several other American universities and schools of theology. I have been extensively involved internationally over the last twenty years in the development of Christian spirituality as an interdisciplinary scholarly field and am a Past President of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality which is linked to the American Academy of Religion. With others, I am involved in moves to develop a specifically European network of spirituality scholars, representing all dimensions of the field. I have also been, or am, assessor or consultant for a number of graduate and doctoral programmes in spirituality in the USA, Canada, Ireland and Scandinavia. I am on the editorial boards of three leading English-language journals in the field of Christian spirituality and have been involved more generally in theological publishing, as General Editor of The Way international journal and its Supplements (1981-94) and as a Governor and Chair of the independent SCM Press Trust and Chair of the Editorial Board of SCM Press, London. I am the author or editor of several books, mainly in the field of academic spirituality, including Spirituality and History (1991/1996), Spirituality and Theology (1998) and Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory, Identity (2001)- the 1999 Hulsean Lectures in Cambridge. 2005 also saw the publication of the New Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, a five year project which I edited in collaboration with some 190 international contributors.

Outside academic work, I have been actively involved for over thirty years in Christian ecumenism on committees and as a consultant at local, regional and international levels. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Publications

Books: authored

Sheldrake, P. F. 2001. Spaces for the sacred place, memory and identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (View publication online)

Edited works: contributions

Sheldrake, P.F. 2004. “Reading church buildings as spiritual/theological texts”. In Het kerkgebouw in het postinduriele landschap. Kees Doevendans & Gertjan van der Horst Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boekencentrum.

Essays in edited volumes

Sheldrake, P. 2005. Christian spirituality as a way of living publicly a dialectic of the mystical and the prophetic. In Minding the spirit the study of Christian spirituality. Dreyer, Elizabeth A. & Burrows, Mark S. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 282-298. (Additional information) (View publication online)
Sheldrake, P. 2005. Interpretation. In The Blackwell companion to Christian spirituality. Holder, Arthur. Oxford: Blackwell. 459-477. (Additional information) (View publication online)

Journal papers: academic

Sheldrake, P. F. 2003. Christian spirituality as a way of living publicly: A dialectic of mystical and prophetic. Spiritus: Journal of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality 3(1). (Additional information)
Sheldrake, P.F. 2002. “Interpreting texts and traditions”. Sewanee Review 46/1.
Sheldrake, P. 2001. Unending desire De Certeau's 'mystics'. Way supplement 102: 38-48. (Additional information) (View publication online)