Inaugural lecture Professor Rachel Muers

On 12 December, Rachel Muers will deliver her inaugural lecture as Professor of Theology at the University of Leeds.

The title of her lecture is “Theology in the Fabric of a Secular University: Of Friends and Professors". 

Following the lecture, a reception will be held in the Maurice Keyworth Building, Room 1.33. 

In the lecture she will offer a theological account of why the secular university matters, and how theology works within it. She may also attempt to explain why making her a professor of theology was an odd thing to do.

About Rachel Muers

Rachel Muers joined the University of Leeds in 2007 as lecturer in Christian Studies. Previously she was lecturer and then senior lecturer in theology at the University of Exeter, and before that Margaret Smith Research Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. Her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are from the University of Cambridge. Her first university-based teaching experience was a year spent teaching spoken English to students in south-east China. 

Over her career she has had the opportunity to develop and pursue a wide range of research interests at the intersections of Christian theology and ethics, with occasional forays further afield. She has published single-author monographs on the theological ethics of communication (Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication, Blackwell 2004), on responsibility to future generations (Living for the Future: Theological Ethics for Coming Generations, T & T Clark 2008), and on Quaker theological ethics (Testimony: Quakerism and Theological Ethics, SCM Press 2015). She has co-authored monographs on dietary restriction in/and Christian theology (Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet, with David Grumett; Routledge 2010), and on approaches to biblical interpretation inspired by the practice of scriptural reasoning (The Text in Play Experiments in Reading Scripture, with Mike Higton; Wipf and Stock 2012). She is also the co-author of the textbook Modern Theology: A Critical Introduction (with Mike Higton; Routledge 2015). Other current research interests include theology and social class, and theologies of institutions.

Rachel is the current president of the Society for the Study of Theology, and a member of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission. 

At the University she is a co-chair of the Women at Leeds Network