Irish School of Ecumenics

Catherine Cornille is Associate Professor of Comparative Theology and chair of the Department of Theology at Boston College.  Her teaching and research focus mainly on methodological questions in the study of religions, inculturation and interreligious dialogue.  Her books include The Guru in Indian Catholicism: Ambiguity or Opportunity of Inculturation (1991); ed., Many Mansions: Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity (2002); ed., Song Divine: Christian Commentaries on the Bhagavadgita (2006); and most recently The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (2008).  She is managing editor of the series “Christian Commentaries on non-Christian Sacred Texts.”

· Linda Hogan is Professor of Ecumenics and currently Head of School at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin. She is a theological ethicist with research and teaching interests in the fields of politics and human rights. Specialising in Christian social ethics, intercultural ethics, and the ethics of gender her recent publications include Religious Voices in Public Places (ed. with Biggar), Oxford University Press, 2009 and Traditions in Dialogue: Applied Ethics in a World Church, (ed.) Maryknoll, Orbis, 2008, [2009 Catholic Book Award, First Place, Educational Books. Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada]. She is a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.

John D’Arcy May, b. Melbourne, Australia, 1942. STL Gregoriana, Rome, 1969; Dr. theol. (Ecumenics) Münster, 1975; wissenschaftlicher Assistent at Catholic Ecumenical Institute, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Univ. of Münster, 1975-1982; Dr. phil. (History of Religions) Frankfurt, 1983; Ecumenical Research Officer with Melanesian Council of Churches, Port Moresby, and Research Associate at the Melanesian Institute, Goroka, Papua New Guinea, 1983-87; Director, Irish School of Ecumenics, Dublin, 1987-1990; now Associate Professor of Interfaith Dialogue, ISE, and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. Visiting professor in Fribourg, Switzerland (1982); Frankfurt, Germany (1988); Wollongong, Australia (1994); Tilburg, Netherlands (1996); Australian Catholic University, Sydney (2001); Istituto Trentino di Cultura, Centro per le Studie Religiose, Italy (2006). His publications include: Meaning, Consensus and Dialogue in Buddhist-Christian Communication: A Study in the Construction of Meaning (Berne: Peter Lang, 1984); [ed.] Living Theology in Melanesia: A Reader (Goroka: The Melanesian Institute, 1985); Christus Initiator. Theologie im Pazifik (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1990); [ed.] Pluralism and the Religions: The Theological and Political Dimensions (London: Cassell, 1998); After Pluralism: Towards an Interreligious Ethic (Münster-Hamburg-London: Lit Verlag, 2000); Transcendence and Violence: The Encounter of Buddhist, Christian and Primal Traditions (New York and London: Continuum, 2003); [ed.] Converging Ways? Conversion and Belonging in Buddhism and Christianity (St Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2006)

Ina Merdjanova is the director of the Center for Interreligious Dialogue and Conflict Prevention at the Scientific Research Department of Sofia University, Bulgaria. She received her PhD from Sofia University in 1995, and has held visiting fellowships at Oxford University and other institutions in the UK, Holland, Hungary, Germany, and the USA. She is the author and editor of six books in Bulgarian as well as of a monograph in English entitled Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society in Eastern Europe—The Postcommunist Palimpsest (Edwin Mellen Press, 2002). Merdjanova has recently published a co-authored manuscript with Patrice Brodeur of Montreal University Religion as a Conversation Starter: Interreligious dialogue for Peacebuilding in the Balkans (Continuum, 2009) and is presently working on a book on Islam in the Balkans.

Ram-Prasad Chakravarthi studied Politics, Sociology and History in India, and took a doctorate in Philosophy at Oxford. He taught at the National University of Singapore and held Research Fellowships at Trinity College Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge before joining Lancaster. At Lancaster, Professor Chakravarthi is an Associate Dean for Research. He has also been Visiting Fellow at Benares Hindu University, Ecole Francaise d’ Extreme Orient, Pondicherry, De Nobili College, Pune, and Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. In 2006-07, he was a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute for Advanced Studies, Bangalore.

Professor Chakravarthi has a range of interests in global and comparative studies and is on the academic advisory council of the Global Religion and Ethics Forum and the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He was Asia advisor for the Templeton Foundation’s Global Perspective on Science and Spirituality Programme, 2004-6. in addition, he is a South Asia Reviews Editor of Philosophy East and West; and sits on the editorial and advisory board of the Online Forum of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, Blackwell Compass Religion, Diskus, the online journal of the British Association for the Study of Religion, and Fu Jen International Religious Studies.

He regularly lectures at universities in the US, Europe, East Asia and India. Recent major lectures include plenary address at the 9th East-West Philosophers’ Conference in Hawaii, 2005; Weidenfield Lecture, Glasgow University, 2006; Bimal Matilal Memorial Lecture, Jadavpur University, 2007; Swami Haridas Memorial Lecture, Madras University, 2007. Publications include: Knowledge and Liberation in Classical Indian Thought, Library of Philosophy and Religion (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001); Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism (Routledge Curzon, London; 2002); Eastern Philosophy, Weidenfield and Nicholson (London, 2005); India: Life, Myth and Art (Duncan Baird, London, 2006); Indian Philosophy and the Consequences of Knowledge: Themes in metaphysics, ethics and soteriology (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2007).

William Storrar is Director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, an independent ecumenical institute for visiting scholars pursuing interdisciplinary advanced research. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, a Magnusson Fellow of Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, and  an elected member of the International Academy of Practical Theology, and the American Theological Society.  He was formerly Professor of Christian Ethics and Practical Theology and Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Edinburgh.

He took his MA, BD, and PhD degrees at the University of Edinburgh, where he also served on the University Court as the Rector’s Assessor. After serving in parish ministry as an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland, he lectured in Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen and then the University of Glasgow, before being appointed to a Chair at the University of Edinburgh in 2000.  While teaching at Glasgow and Edinburgh, he served as an external examiner for the MPhil degrees in Ecumenics and in Reconciliation Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics. His research interests include the ministry and mission of the church in its changing social context, and theology and public issues, especially questions of citizenship and civil society. He has lectured widely in practical and public theology, including the USA, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, South Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. His publications include the co-edited works, Public Theology for the 21st Century (T&T Clark, 2004), and A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology (forthcoming, Eerdmans, 2010). He chairs the editorial board of the International Journal of Public Theology and serves on the editorial boards of theological journals in Germany and South Africa.

Robert Schreiter holds the Vatican Council II Professorship of Theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He has taught there since 1974, and has held concurrent professorships in Germany and in the Netherlands. His research interests include religion and culture, the mission of the Church, globalization, and the field of reconciliation and peacebuilding. He has published seventeen books, including Constructing Local Theologies (1985), The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (1997), The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality and Strategies (1997), and Mission in the Third Millennium (2001). He has lectured in some fifty countries around the world.

Ataullah Siddiqui did his PhD in Theology from the University of Birmingham. He is the Reader in Religious Pluralism and Inter-Faith Relations at Markfield Institute of Higher Education, where he teaches ‘Islam and Pluralism’, ‘Inter-Faith Relations’ and is the course director of ‘Training of Muslim Chaplains’. He was also the Director of the Institute from 2001 to 2008. He is a Visiting Professor at University of Gloucestershire and is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the HRH

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World at the University of Edinburgh. He was founder President and Vice Chair of Christian Muslim Forum, and founder member of the Leicester Council of Faiths. His publications include: Christian-Muslim Dialogue in the Twentieth Century

(1997), Islam and Other Faiths[a collection of Ismail Raji Al- Faruqi’s

articles] (1998).  Christians and Muslims in the Commonwealth: A Dynamic

Role in the Future [Co-Edited 2001],He has contributed chapters in several books

including:, ‘Believing and Belonging in a Pluralist Society – Exploring Resources in

Islamic Traditions’ in David A. Hart (Ed.) Multi-Faith Britain (2002), ‘Islam and

Christian Theology’ in The Modern Theologians, Edited by David Ford 2005. ‘A

Muslim View of Christianity’ in Islam and Inter-Faith Relations Edited by Perry

Schmidt-Lukel and Lloyd Ridgeon (2007). He is also the author of Islam at Universities in England: Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future, 2007 [‘Siddiqui Report’ commissioned by the Government] www.dfes.gov.uk/hegateway/uploads/DrSiddiquiReport.pdf .

Felix Wilfred was born in Tamil Nadu, India in 1948. He is the President of the faculty of arts, and Chairman of The School of Philosophy and Religious thought, State University of Madras. He is also a member of the Statutory Ethical Committee of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He was a member of International Theological Commission of the Vatican. As visiting professor, he has taught at the Universities of Nijmegen, Münster, Frankfurt am Main, Boston College and Ateneo de Manila. His researches and field studies today cut across many disciplines in humanities and social sciences. His more recent publications in the field of Theology are On the Banks of Ganges (2002), Asian Dreams and Christian Hope (2003), The Sling of Utopia: Struggles for a Different Society (2005), and Margins: Site of Asian Theologies (2008).