Benjamin Tonna Lecture 2013

On Monday 25^th November 2013, the Institute for Research on the Signs of the Times (DISCERN) is organizing the Benjamin Tonna Lecture 2013 on ‘Tales of Sinai – The Incredible Lady Bible Hunters’. The guest speaker will be Professor Janet Soskice, Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge. This event will be held at the Phoenicia Hotel, Floriana, at 7:00 p.m.

JANET SOSKICE is Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College. She was born in Canada and studied at Cornell University and the University of Sheffield, prior to doing a doctorate in the philosophy of religion at the University of Oxford. She was a lecturer at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, she taught philosophy of religion, ethics and doctrine at the University of Oxford and philosophy at Heythrop College, University of London. She is the first Roman Catholic woman to be a Professor of Theology at the University of Cambridge.

She has been a visiting professor in Canada, Sweden and the United States and in 1997 was a McCarthy Visiting Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University. She takes an active role in Jewish-Christian relations, Anglican-Roman Catholic ecumenical discussions and the Christian-Muslim dialogue. She was a member of the Building Bridges Seminar, an initiative of the Archbishop of Canterbury for Christian/Muslim relations at Georgetown University, and in Doha. Currently, she is a Director of the “Bible and Classical Antiquity in 19th Century Culture” Project at the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. She is a past-President of both the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain and the Society for the Study of Theology.

Professor Soskice has authored several books, amongst them Metaphor and Religious Language (O.U.P. 1984); The Kindness of God (O.U.P. 2007) and has edited (with Grant Gillett and K.W. Fulford), Medicine and Moral Reasoning (C.U.P, 1994); with Diana Lipton, Feminism and Theology, Oxford Readings in Feminism (OUP, 2003) and with Carlo Cogliati, David Burrell, and W. Stoeger, Creation and the God of Abraham (Cambridge 2010).

Her recent books Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Lost Gospels (London: Chatty and New York: Knopf, 2009) was Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, Best Books of the Year lists of the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and the Library Journal. In 2011 she was a judge of the Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. Professor Soskice is a Patron of the Westminster College Appeal, a Trustee of The Tablet and Honorary Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford.

Professor Janet Soskice is married to Oliver and they have two daughters.