CCS members offer some thoughts about the pandemic - some words of hope, consolation, food for thought and more.

CCS Staff

Karen Kilby (Bede Chair of Catholic Theology)

• What do pandemics change? Confidence despite suffering in the era of the Black Death. A piece considering the reflections of Julian of Norwich.

Elizabeth Powell (La Retraite Fellow in Theology and Spirituality)

• The paradoxes of enclosure
• The suspended beauty of the cross
• Glimpses of a new order

Anna Rowlands (St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice)

• Editor of Dark Times and the Principle of Hope
• Living in a time out of shape (What does it mean to spend time well, and how might our collective experience of the current restrictions affect the way we impose them on others in future?)
• Simone Weil and the gift of inarticulacy: How not to live in lockdown
• How not to be an idiot: Hannah Arendt on public life in Covid-19 times
• Gillian Rose and the politics of mourning

Rik Van Nieuwenhove (Associate Professor of Medieval Thought)

• Covid-19, distractions, and hope

CCS Students

Charlotte Bray (PhD student supported by a Louis Lafosse scholarship)

• Covid-19, vulnerability and grief

Gaël Pardoën (PhD student supported by Mary Ward and St Jude bursaries)

• Being the dismembered body of Christ

Fr Thomas Sharp (PhD student)

• Empowerment in a time of pandemic: Reflections on Rahner's theology of sickness

Florence Taylor (PhD student supported by a Louis Lafosse scholarship)

• How to avoid getting distracted in lockdown: Pursuing real hope with Simone Weil
• A view from the middle: Trauma theology and Covid-19
• Rooting the Cross in its soil: the danger of sanitising grassroots movements during Covid-19

Other CCS Members

Nicolete Burbach (Consultant Research Fellow, Teaching Fellow, and CCS alumna)

• Curator of the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice's Covid-19 Blog Project
• What Covid-19 can teach us about trans inclusion
• My career may not survive this tempest

Giles Gasper (Professor of High Medieval History)

• Co-curator of Narratives of Resilience, a podcast featuring research from the History Department on human responses to crisis and disaster

Simon Oliver (Van Mildert Professor of Divinity)

• The isolation of illness and the body of Christ

CCS Alumnae

Maria Exall (Honorary Fellow and former Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Catholic Social Thought and Practice)

• Covid-19 and the survival of the fittest
• Workers’ rights and the Covid-19 pandemic
• Covid-19 pandemic and the renewal of political economy
• Welcoming the stranger within at a time of Brexit and Covid-19

Rachel Davies (former doctoral student at the CCS, now Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University)

• What do pandemics change? Human vulnerability and embracing the leper. A piece considering the spiritual experiences of Angela of Foligno and Francis of Assisi.

Gabrielle Thomas (former Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the CCS, now Lecturer at Yale Divinity School)

• How should we draw on the Christian tradition during Covid-19?
• What do pandemics change? An antidote to platitudes. A reflection on ‘everything happens for a reason’ in conversation with Gregory of Nazianzus.