I am Professor of Christian History and Theology and I hold an honorary position as Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral

I teach and conduct research in historical theology. That is, I am a scholar of the history of Christian thought (with a particular focus on the early church: 100-500 CE) but I also write about the reception of early theology by modern thinkers and I am very interested in the implications of early theology for the world today.

My last book Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors takes its starting-point from the way in which ancient writers compared texts with paintings or sculptures. By looking more deeply into these comparisons, I seek to recover a sense of ancient authorship as craft -- something which is both useful and beautiful. My book focuses on Greek writers, especially the Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) and John Chrysostom. All of these were trained in rhetoric and one aim of my book is to refocus our view on late antique rhetoric, seeing it as a series of shared, flexible practices, rather than as rigid rules. My current research is developing my interest in early Christian adaptations of ancient rhetoric. I am asking: what did these writers and speakers think good speech was? Who were their role models as good speakers? What made good speech good? How did they read biblical passages about good speech in the light of their rhetorical training?

In addition, I have written extensively on the fourth-century Cappadocian theologian, Gregory of Nyssa. My second monograph, Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and Post-Modern focussed on the reception, use and abuse of Gregory by modern writers. I help coordinate international research meetings on Gregory of Nyssa and am involved in peer-reviewing papers for the series of studies on Gregory published by Brill.

My interest in the reception and interpretation of the early church fathers stretches beyond Gregory of Nyssa. For example, I co-led an international research project on the interpretation of early Christian writers in the modern and post-modern context, which resulted in the publication of Scot Douglass and Morwenna Ludlow (edd.) Reading the Church Fathers. I have also published on the recent reception of Augustine's Confessions and the City of God. I have appeared on BBC Radio 4's In our Time, discussing the Confessions.

An important theme in my research has been Christian eschatology, especially the idea of universal salvation. My first monograph, Universal Salvation, studied this concept in Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner. I have also published papers on this idea as it appears in the Reformation, the seventeenth century and other periods. My reflections on hell and its history as a Christian idea were featured as part of a Radio 4 programme, "Beyond Belief".

I welcome enquiries from students wishing to conduct research in any of the above areas and on theology of the early Church more generally.

I teach an introductory module on the development of early Christianity and specialised modules on the following themes:

• the history and theology of heaven and hell;
• Augustine's Confessions;
• early Christian women.

Research supervision:

I welcome enquiries about research in any area relating to the early Christian church or literature in Late Antiquity, including projects involving reception-history or the relation of the Fathers to modern theology/philosophy.