The William Temple Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of a second Senior Research Fellow, Revd Dr John Reader.
Dr Reader is a parish priest, theological educator and practical theologian with over 30 years’ experience in rural ministry. He is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Worcester and a Senior Tutor in Christian Rural and Environmental Studies at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. His most recent book, Theology and New Materialism: Spaces of Faithful Dissent (2017), was published by Palgrave Macmillan. Dr Reader coordinates the William Temple Foundation’s Ethical Futures Group, which meets monthly at Trinity College Oxford, and works on developing theological responses to ecological challenges and digital technologies.
Dr Reader’s research at the foundation will focus particularly on the idea of Relational Christian Realism, as described in A Philosophy of Christian Materialism: Entangled Fidelities and the Public Good (2015), which was co-written with Chris Baker and Tom James. He will also be developing the notion of Modest Ethics, drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and the New Materialists, as well as recent contributions from Bruno Latour and Bernard Stiegler.
Commenting on the new appointment, Director of Research Professor Chris Baker says: ‘The Foundation has long benefitted from the originality and creativity of John’s writing and research interests, and we are thrilled by the prospect of this next chapter of our relationship with John.’
Dr Reader says: ‘In these turbulent times, when public trust in institutions is being undermined by concerns about fake news and manipulated deployments of the digital, I look forward to further developing the tasks of constructing a public theology building upon the heritage of Temple and his successors.’
You can read more about our Research Fellows and their work here. And you can follow John on Twitter @DrJohnReader.
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