Theology and Religious Studies

My research and teaching expertise is Islam in its variety, spirituality and historical developments. My publications include books on women and Islam during the Fatimid dynasty and on Muslim women as prayer leaders (imams). I can supervise dissertations on Islam and gender, religious authority, society and gender, Qur’anic exegesis, hadith studies, Shi ‘i theology and past and present encounters of Islam with other religions. I obtained my PhD in Islamic Studies from SOAS, University of London after studying Arabic and Middle Eastern civilizations at the Orientale, University of Naples in Italy and at the American University in Cairo.  I have been teaching at Roehampton since 1995.

I am the co-convenor of the MA Theology and Religious Studies Programme. I research and teach in the areas of global Pentecostalism, Christianity in Africa and the African diaspora, inter-religious relations, and religion and development. I have published widely on Pentecostalism and African Christianity. My most recent book is titled Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development (2020).  I gained my PhD from the University of Birmingham and lectured in Nigeria for many years.  I joined Roehampton in 2013.   

I teach Christian theology, focussing in particular on the modern and contemporary eras, but also putting these into dialogue with previous periods in the church’s history in order to enrich our thought with the richness of the length and breadth of Christianity’s tradition. My research focusses on the theology of creation, which has led me into academic engagement with the climate crisis and other contemporary issues. I obtained my DPhil from Oxford University, and a modified version of it was published in 2014 by Bloomsbury as The Dialectics of Creation. I have been at Roehampton since 2017.

I specialise in Hinduism and Buddhism, philosophy of mind, yoga and meditation, and decolonisation and religion. My research focuses on Sanskrit texts from the 2nd-5th centuries CE. I can supervise dissertations on Asian religion and philosophy; religion, race and decolonisation; theory and method in the study of religion; global philosophy of religion; religion and gender; and meditation and mental health. I gained my PhD from SOAS University of London. 

I research and teach in the area of Christian theology. I have published on the theory and practice of Christian prayer, and specialise in modern theology (especially the theology of Karl Barth) and in Anglican theology. I obtained my doctorate from the University of Cambridge for a thesis on Karl Barth’s theology of prayer (published with T&T Clark in 2015) after studying at the University of Edinburgh. I am currently working on a theology of the smile in engagement with developmental and social psychology, and an externally funded collaborative project exploring the experience of saying the creed among ‘older Christians’ in local Roehampton churches.

I am a political scientist and theologian. I'm also Head of Whitelands College and a senior Lecturer at Roehampton. My research interests include the intersection of religion and politics, Black Theology and Liberation Theology, Pentecostalism history and the experience of diaspora churches, African American social and political thought. I have extensive experience working with faith communities in the UK and spent over a decade working in the criminal justice system and as a Home Office adviser on citizenship, policing, and community cohesion. I am the UK convener for the Transatlantic Roundtable of Religion and Race.