We welcome the following confirmed speakers. Details of the full programme and selected papers will follow in July 2018, with further information to be added below.
- Professor John Harvey, School of Art, Aberystwyth University. Harvey is a historian of art, visual culture, and sound art, and also a sound- and visual-art practitioner. His research field is the visual and sonic culture of religion, principally. In his historical studies, he engages the imagery and sonorities of popular piety, the Judaeo-Christian scriptures, supernaturalist traditions, and working-class culture. His books include The Bible as Visual Culture (2013), Photography & Spirit (2007/10), The Appearance of Evil: Apparitions of Spirits in Wales (2003), Image of the Invisible: The Visualization of Religion in The Welsh Nonconformist Tradition (1999), and The Art of Piety: The Visual Culture of Welsh Nonconformity (1995).
- Revd Dr. Ayla Lepine, Assistant Curate, Hampstead Parish Church, London. Lepine studied Theology at both Oxford and Cambridge, and completed her PhD in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2011. Her research focuses on the intersections of Christianity and visual culture in Britain c.1850 to the present. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music and the Courtauld, and taught at the V&A, Nottingham, and Warwick. She was Lecturer and Visiting Fellow in Art History at the University of Essex from 2014 to 2018. Her publications include Gothic Legacies (2012), Revival: Identities, Memories, Utopias (2015), Modern Architecture and Religious Communities (2018), contributions to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, and articles on the Gothic Revival, the Hereford Screen, and modern monasticism for publications including Architectural History, The Sculpture Journal, and British Art Studies. Her new book, Medieval Metropolis, will be published with Bloomsbury in 2020.
- Right Revd Dr. Martin Warner, Bishop of Chichester. Dr Warner studied at St Chad’s College in Durham before completing his theological training at St Stephen’s House, Oxford. He was ordained deacon (1984) and priest (1985) in Exeter Cathedral whilst working as Curate of St Peter’s Plymouth. Serving parishes in Leicestershire, Norfolk, Norwich, and Yorkshire, he was also previously a residentiary Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, developing the Cathedral’s significant connection with the art world (2003-2010). Dr Warner is a regular contributor to the Church Times and has written five books, including The Habit of Holiness (2004), Known to the Senses (2004), and Between Heaven and Charing Cross (2009).
- Maciej Urbanek. Urbanek was born in Kielce, Holy Cross Mountains in Poland. Prior to completing his postgraduate studies at the RA Schools, he studied Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and Theory and Philosophy of Law at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. Maciej was awarded the Royal Academy Gold Medal in 2010. Since graduating from the RA Schools, Urbanek has been exhibiting internationally and working independently as an artist and curator. In 2015 he organised a critically acclaimed series of exhibitions entitled 10 One-Night Stands. The same year he received the prestigious ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context for his installation HS in St Michael’s Church in Camden, London. In December 2016 Maciej opened his gallery URBANEK in South Dulwich.
- Jonathan Anderson, Associate Professor of Art, Biola University. As an artist, Anderson’s works have been featured in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. Alongside this studio practice, his research and writing focusses on modern and contemporary art, with a particular interest in exploring its relations to religion and theology. He is the coauthor, with theologian William Dyrness, of Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism (2016), and he has contributed to various other books and journals, including Religion and the Arts, Christian Scholar’s Review, Art and Christianity, Themelios, ARTS, and SEEN. Professor Anderson has given scholarly presentations at meetings of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, and the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art, and he has received research fellowships from the Center for Christian Thought and the Nagel Institute. He is currently working on a PhD at King’s College London.
Banner image: Maciej Urbanek, HS, 2014, St Michael’s Church, Camden. Photograph used with permission.