Name: Forming a Christian Mind Spring Conference 2025
Start: 2025-02-22T09:30:00+00:00
End: 2025-02-22T17:00:00+00:00
Location: Old Divinity School, St John's College

Forming a Christian Mind Spring Conference 2025

Exploring the Human: Teaching, Collaboration, and the Academic Vocation in Light of the Gospel
About this Event
Event Photos

Date and location

You are warmly invited to a Forming a Christian Mind day conference, entitled 'Exploring the Human: Teaching, Collaboration, and the Academic Vocation in Light of the Gospel', which will take place on 22 February 2025 at the Old Divinity School, St John's College, Cambridge.

This event is for anyone doing postgraduate study or postdoctoral research and for junior academics, based in the UK or wider Europe.

Topic

How can we be good teachers, colleagues and pastoral mentors, in light of our Christian understanding of what it means to be human? The way we carry out those responsibilities can be shaped primarily by the default in our particular department. But how can we let Scripture and specifically an evangelical understanding of what it means to be human shape our interactions with others in the university?
How does that view of the human impact our view of teaching, the way we relate to our supervisors, and how we navigate departmental politics? And how can we also make use of opportunities in our everyday professional academic work to share the gospel with our colleagues and students?
Our Spring Conference will continue our theme for this academic year of 'Exploring the Human'. It will be vocational in its focus, examining how our commitment to a robustly Christian account of the human should shape our attitude to our teaching, pastoral, and collegial responsibilities. While it will follow on thematically from our Autumn Study Day, it will have a stand-alone programme, so you are welcome to attend, whether you attended the Study Day or not.

Programme

In the morning plenary session, Prof Brad Green will offer an introduction to how understandings of what it means to be human shape approaches to the academic vocation and relationships within the academy, and how the gospel speaks into this. Prof Karen Coats will then develop this with a focus on teaching, while Prof Cecilia Brassett will reflect on academic service more broadly, such as teamwork, departmental politics, and pastoral care.

We will break for lunch, which will be provided.

After lunch, we will hear again from Prof Green, who will help us consider how we might share the gospel within the world of the university, and from Dr Zachary Ardern, who will offer further insight into how academics can go about making use of their academic expertise and position for gospel outreach. The afternoon will also feature workshops for discipline clusters, and a panel discussion.

--------------------------------

Not a postgraduate student, postdoctoral researcher or academic at a university in the UK or Europe? We may be able to accommodate you if do not fit into one of the categories of the Eventbrite tickets and registration form. Please fill in this application form and we will then review your application.

Please note that this conference will be in-person only. Tickets are non-transferable.

For more information and to join our mailing list to stay up to date please visit: www.formingachristianmind.org

Speakers

Prof Karen Coats is Director of the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Homerton College, Cambridge. She holds a PhD in Human Sciences from George Washington University, and taught at Illinois State University for over twenty years prior to her appointment at Cambridge. She is the co-editor of six essay collections and author of three books on literature for young readers, including The Bloomsbury Introduction to Children’s and Young Adult Literature (2017), which offers a comprehensive introduction to the history, forms, genres, and theoretical concerns of youth literature. She is the recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and has been a research fellow at two Seminars in Christian Scholarship at Calvin College, Michigan.

Prof Bradley G. Green is Professor of Theological Studies at Union University, Tennessee, and Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He holds a PhD from Baylor University, Texas, and is the author of several books, including The Gospel and the Mind: Recovering and Shaping the Intellectual Life (Crossway, 2010), and Covenant and Commandment: Works, Obedience, and Faithfulness in the Christian Life (IVP Academic, 2015). He helped found Augustine School, a Christian liberal arts school in Jackson, Tennessee. He is also Senior Contributor for The Imaginative Conservative, and has served as Writer-In-Residence at Tyndale House, Cambridge.

Prof Cecilia Brassett is Teaching Professor of Human Anatomy and University Clinical Anatomist at the University of Cambridge, having previously practised as a general surgeon. She is a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where she is the Director of Studies for the second year of the Medical Sciences tripos, as well as an Undergraduate Tutor and Deputy Senior Tutor. Her research interests include topics relating to the gastrointestinal tract and musculoskeletal system. She is the co-author of The Secret Language of Anatomy: An Illustrated Guide to the Origins of Anatomical Terms (North Atlantic Books, 2017). She is a Councillor of the Anatomical Society and of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists, and a Fellow and MRCS Examiner at the Royal College of Surgeons.

Dr Zachary Ardern is a postdoctoral fellow in evolutionary genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge. His studies in biology and philosophy were at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and he previously conducted research at the Technical University of Munich and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. His scientific research investigates the evolution and functions of young genes in bacteria and viruses, and he regularly speaks and writes on the relationship between biology, philosophy, and Christian faith.