Completed Postgraduate Research

Paul Corcoran: Christian Wonder and the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh

My research aims to move towards the development of a modern Christian theology of wonder today. It begins by tracing to the Patristic preoccupation with curiositas the negativistic assessment of wonder throughout much of the history of Christian theology. Building on Aquinas’ ideal of a ‘virtuous’ wonder, it will remimagine Christian wonder as a kind of active ‘receptivity’ with which Christians are called to partake in the inherent mystery of their faith, a sacramental state of mind attuned to the transcendent ‘more-than-is’ (Maritain) of God’s presence in the world and in the Sacraments of the Church. Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry will be established as displaying the virtue and sacramentality redolent of true Christian wonder and will offer an evocative example of the role Christian art can play in the cultivation and communication of a flourishing theology of wonder today.

Paul Corcoran

Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan.

Shane Daly, Called to Preach the Word: Laity and the ministry of preaching – A case study in ecclesiology

The challenge to have the gospel heard in the present age is immense. This thesis will explore a question of profound importance for the Church in the present and for its future - the question of ministry and who can minister in the Church. It is a question whose answer will impact upon how the gospel is proclaimed, how discipleship is nurtured, and how the mission to evangelize is carried forward. The thesis will explore questions of ministry, paying particular attention to the ministry of preaching, and a consideration of who may, and who may not, preach today. The theology underpinning these permissions will be explored, critiqued and evaluated to determine if current law and practice might perhaps need to change in light of a deepening theological understanding of ministry.

Shane Daly

Supervisor: Prof. Fáinche Ryan

Stephen Huws: The Virgin Mary in Co. Dublin, 1869-1944: The Reception of the Bible in Stained Glass

Focusing on the period from 1869, the year when the Anglican Church of Ireland was disestablished, to 1944, when the celebrated Irish glass producers An Túr Gloine closed their doors, this study will examine the varying depictions of the Virgin Mary during a period in which the far larger Catholic church rose from poverty to wealth and prominence, a number of significant Irish artists began and finished their careers, and independence movements resulted in the partition of the island. Mary is both a fruitful and highly revealing subject matter for the purpose of this study, given both the prolific depictions of her in Christian art and the diverse choices made in portraying her, which allow us insight into understandings of the Bible and faith of artists, patrons and congregations. I completed my BA in Film Studies at the University of Kent in 2013 and my MA in Medieval Studies at the University of York in 2019. I am the recipient of the Provost PhD Award from Trinity College. When I’m not working on my PhD I enjoy photography, Gilbert and Sullivan, and cricket.

Stephen Huws

Supervisor: Prof. David Shepherd

Vicky Holland: The Calumnious Misrepresentation of the Symbolic and Holy Pig

Working in multi-disciplinary fields that centre on the theme of animals in religious contexts. My research builds on my interests of the social configuration of cultures and the importance of religion in shaping the treatment and uses of animals in contemporary society. Animal ethics has been the overarching theme of my academic career, having previously taught the subject for 9 years at undergraduate level. My MA thesis centred on applying utilitarian ethical formulae to the treatment of zoo animal subjects. Ethics, speciesism, anthropology, sociology, the philosophy of human-animal relationships, contemporary and historical human-animal interconnection, animals in religion, animals in art and literature, animal consumption as cultural indicators, paleopathology and zooarchaeology will all feature as part of my future academic trajectory and my current research at Trinity College in the hope of illuminating existential truths concerning human relationships with one another and our non-human animal partners.

Vicky Holland:

Supervisor: Prof. Jacob Erickson.

Oana Sanziana Marian - Just the Vessel with the Wine in It: Christianity’s Social Performances, Poetry’s Sacramental Refusals, and the Theology of Willie James Jennings

My research examines poetic modalities and potentialities in contemporary theological writing (particularly that of the contemporary American theologian Willie James Jennings), and theological dimensions of poetry and poets working, consciously or unconsciously, to rehabilitate diseased and distorted understandings of intimacy within what Jennings calls Christianity’s social performances. The nature of the distortion is racial and gendered, a diseased understanding of self and other, including understandings of self and land, self and animals, and self and community - in the language of Martin Buber, I-it, instead of I-Thou ways of relating to the not-me, including a divine not-me that people call God. A basic premise of this research is that, without an understanding of the centrality and necessity of intimacy – and the way intimacy has been distorted – Christian theological projects, even those driven by liberationist impulses, are stuck in an endlessly creative, ultimately futile, episodic repositioning.

Oana Sanziana Marian

Supervisor: Prof. Siobhan Garrigan.