Research Grants for 2025/26

How effective is theological education and ministerial formation in developing effective and sustainable ministry practice? This project explores an insight from my doctoral research, that intentional efforts in Christian formation might in fact be counterproductive, since the awareness of ‘technique’ can undermine genuine spiritual and vocational growth. Advanced theological study may thus actually be counterproductive to the stated goals by resulting in the ordinand/student evaluating and questioning the efficacy of the spiritual practices of both their role as leader and as worshiper, resulting in either 1) a move into parachurch ministries, or 2) an exit from vocational or lay ministry altogether.

Field research in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan will culminate into a book that documents the experiences and contributions of Christian women, an often-marginalized minority, highlighting their crucial role in shaping theological education and church life in the Middle East. By capturing their stories and insights, the book will address a significant gap in scholarship and serve as a valuable resource for churches, seminaries, and ecumenical partners seeking to understand contemporary Christianity in these contexts.

This project combines arts, story, and serious play to challenge stigma and deepen understanding of homelessness and accommodation insecurity. Building on the South West Peninsula Methodist District’s Let’s Face It exhibition, which uses faces, sound, and lived experience to humanise homelessness, this project proposes the Design, production and touring of a practical and thought provoking event which uses a serious game as a stimulus to initiate conversation and discussion to challenge attitudes and prejudice, collaborating with local homeless charities, Churches and Councils across 5 locations across Devon and Cornwall. Socialudo, a social enterprise co-founded by Professors Vikki McCall and Alasdair Rutherford, will support the exhibition through the Pathways
Paradox serious game. This innovative tool places participants in the shoes of people navigating housing and employment pathways, fostering empathy, reflection, and practical insight. The project will create a safe and creative environment for communities and churches to engage with issues of poverty and homelessness, supporting the Methodist Church’s justice-seeking mission while equipping people for action at both local and national levels.

This project will develop a set of theologically and scientifically informed resources to support spiritual development in children, contributing to the broader Faith and Child Flourishing global study (FCF) as well as World Vision International, a global childfocused organisation, and their priorities for developing spiritual nurture of children resources. It will focus on identifying key developmental stages of spirituality in childhood and adolescence, drawing on theological reflection, developmental psychology, and qualitative insights from practitioners. The project will also explore how spiritual development is understood and nurtured across different faith traditions, ensuring interfaith relevance. Outputs will include a resource toolkit tailored to different age groups, a short report, and dissemination through Methodist and interfaith networks, as well as educators and faith-based NGOs.

Mental health conditions during the perinatal period (spanning pregnancy to a year post-birth) can adversely affect on women and their infants. Perinatal mental health conditions remain under-identified and under-treated, especially among global majority women, who may experience additional barriers to accessing perinatal healthcare. Participatory music, where women actively engage in group musical activities, offers a creative, community-based, inclusive and cost-effective approach for prevention or treatment. Prior work has demonstrated the benefits of perinatal participatory music interventions, but limited research has evaluated culturally inclusive interventions for culturally diverse samples or their impacts on perinatal health inequities. In 2023-2024, CHIME (Community Health Intervention through Music Engagement) was co-developed with and for global majority postnatal women in the London borough of Lewisham in collaboration with the Diversity Matters branch of South East London Mind’s Mindful Mums service. This project aims to expand this pilot music-based intervention to reach more global majority women in Lewisham and evaluate its impact. It will also explore opportunities for adapting CHIME for global majority women in two other London boroughs, Lambeth and Southwark, through formative stakeholder engagement work.

The project recognises that optimism, the belief that the world is changing for the better, has worn thin. It cannot sustain people, especially if their lives are affected by ongoing conflicts or warfare. In their everyday work, Christian practitioners continuously face numerous manifestations of people’s pain and suffering as well as efforts to divide people. At the same time they experience personal fatigue, anxiety and disappointment in what the present and future mean for them, for families and neighbourhoods. The project aims to explore ‘tangible hope’ in practice in these contexts. The project will pilot a reflective learning programme with a group of frontline Christian practitioners through regular online meetings.

The project explores how both digital production and user engagement with discipleship resources and preaching impacts on identity, inclusion and participation, together with how these resources are produced and then received to maximise engagement and minimise exclusion. The research asks what skills and methods enhance the reception of faith-based digital materials and how online engagement might enable people to be more true to themselves in terms of e.g. identity, neurodiversity, disability. Consideration will also be given to the ways in which digital practice could be adapted to enable people to feel more valued, included and safe and how can we train/equip/cultivate positive habits so that people can engage well in digitality and AI through discipleship resources and preaching.

This project seeks to connect the growing grassroots movement of ‘Menstrual Cycle Awareness’ to philosophical and theological perspectives within the Christian tradition. It will focus on exploring how embodied cyclicity, as a lived experience, might be brought into conversation with spiritual and social experience, understanding and practice. This is an academic project but also seeks to have real-world impact by working towards a book aimed at a popular audience on this topic.

This project is a reflection on the reception of the Sanctuary Movement spearheaded by the Rev Dr Inderjit Bhogal within Methodism and beyond, focusing on one example of Chester, as a Borough of Sanctuary, with a Cathedral of Sanctuary, a University of Sanctuary and a Church of Sanctuary (Wesley Centre) as highlighted in a recent Theos Report. The project will be a mix of library based research at the Gladstone Library and in depth interviews with participating organisations for information gathering. This will lead to the publication of research outcomes and the testing of these in a residential conference of participants at the Gladstone Library. Podcasts will be created using materials discussed for wider dissemination and feeding into the connexional reflection on the importance of Sanctuary in as Justice-seeking Church.