The full programme of speakers will be published early 2026 and tickets for attendees will be available to book here in early spring 2026. You can see the Call for Papers here.
Visual Theology’s third conference is a major two-part series on Beauty and Faith. On 8-10 May 2026, we will be holding Part Two in the State Chamber of the Archbishop’s Palace, Southwell, U.K. This is the companion piece to Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith, which was successfully held on 24-26 October, 2025 at the Salmagundi Club in New York City. Alongside the main conference, we also held a special visit to the Met Cloisters and hosted our speakers at an ‘Evening at the Met’ as way of thank you.
Part Two: Beauty and the Revival of Faith is centred on hope, renewal, and revival. This is a restorative companion piece to Part One which explored ideas of fragmented faith, difficult conversions, strained conceits of beauty, and the nervousness of modernism. We now seek to explore how Christianity has used beauty as a form of reinvigoration and transformation during times of social upheaval, a theme exemplified by the Archbishop’s Palace and its role within key moments of the Reformation. We ask how Christianity has turned to visual beauty in times of crisis, as a means of spiritual, artistic, and social reinvigoration. Can a reacquaintance with philosophies of beauty become a way of reinvigorating faith and society today? In keeping with our impressive keynotes, we encourage submissions from those with an inter disciplinary mindset who work within visual culture, theology, and philosophy.
Keynotes: Professor Douglas Hedley (Clare College, University of Cambridge), Dr. Bijan Omrani (Historian, Writer, Classicist), Reverend Dr. Jamie Franklin (Holy Trinity Church, Winchester), and Simon Bray (artist).
Professor Douglas Hedley is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and the Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism. A Neoplatonist by training and thought, his research centres on concepts of imagination, the image and play, the philosophy of beauty and the sublime. His areas of expertise span seventeenth century theology to the philosophy of Coleridge. Works such as The Iconic Imagination (2008) rightly confirm Hedley’s position as one of the world’s preeminent philosophers of religion. He is an editor of the series ‘Studies in Philosophical Theology’; and among his many notable roles, Hedley has been a Templeton Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, a Directeur d’études invités at the EPHE of the Sorbonne, held a Teape lectureship in India, and in 2023, he delivered the inaugural lectures at Ralston College.
Dr. Bijan Omrani is a historian, writer, and classicist. He researches religious history and cultural identity from Britain, to Ancient Rome and Greece, to Afghanistan. His most recent book, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England (2025), shows how Christianity was instrumental in the creation and development of the English nation, before offering Christianity, rightly understood, as a way of dealing with the eternal questions of the human condition, and the malaises of modernity. An Oxford-educated barrister, Omrani has taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School, is a former editor of the Asian Affairs Journal, and is an Associate of the Centre for the Study of Platonism in the University of Cambridge. He writes for The Spectator, The Critic, The Literary Review, as well as The Daily Telegraph, and is a church warden.
Reverend Dr. Jamie Franklin has degrees in English Literature, Philosophy, and Biblical Studies, and a doctorate in Systematic Theology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Great Return (2025), which explores the idea that we are living at the end of a civilised age where only a revival of Christianity can reverse these trends. His book urges the Church to take seriously its own commitment to the metaphysical and ethical presuppositions of its own faith. Franklin is also the author of Charles Taylor and Anglican Theology Aesthetic Ecclesiology (2021) and is the host of the podcast Irreverend: Faith and Current Affairs. He joined Holy Trinity Winchester in 2023, having previously served as a curate in Nottingham.
Simon Bray is a photographer and musician whose work explores notions of loss, identity, time, and place. His work has been shown at The Southbank Centre, Manchester International Festival, The Whitworth, and Brighton Photo Fringe. Editorially, he has featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, FT and The Telegraph. His book Dear Kairos explores Ancient Greek concepts of time, winning the Fotographia Europea Book Award (2023) and was shortlisted for the Arles des Rencontres Prix du Livre. He has previously worked as a creative producer with Martin Parr and in 2021 was invited by Manchester Cathedral to document the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth Il during her last public visit to the city. His latest project, ‘Searching Beneath the Silence’, was recently exhibited in Winchester where he recently began his postgraduate research.