Our Speakers

Professor Dr Gavin D’Costa

Gavin D’Costa is Professor in Catholic Theology at Bristol University, where he has taught since 1991. He has published seven books, a number of edited collections and has written extensively about Christianity and the religions. He studied English and Theology (BA) at Birmingham University and then completed his doctoral work at Cambridge University. He taught in London until moving to Bristol and was also Joseph McCarthy Professor at the Gregorian University, Rome. He acts as an advisor to the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Anglican Church on matters of interreligious dialogue and theology. He also advises the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Vatican City. He has published a book of poetry. He is married to a Quaker and has two children.

Rt Revd Professor Dr Tom Wright

Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley

Bishop Helen-Ann was previously Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand, an office she has held since 2014. At the time she was the first woman priest ordained in the Church of England to become a bishop. She succeeds Bishop James Bell who retired last year.

Bishop Helen-Ann was born in Edinburgh and grew up in north-east England. She is the fourth generation of her family to be ordained, and was priested in 2006 in the Diocese of Oxford.
She worked as one of a team ministering to 12 rural parishes in Oxfordshire before being appointed as the Director of Biblical Studies and a lecturer in the New Testament at Ripon College Cuddesdon, near Oxford.

Helen-Ann, with her husband Myles who is a musician and church organist, went to New Zealand in 2010 to undertake research at St John’s College – and returned there in February 2011 to take up the position as Dean. In 2014 she became joint diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Waikato and Taranaki, unique in the Anglican Communion with two equal bishops sharing jurisdiction across the whole of the diocese.

 Dr Graham Tomlin

President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington. Graham was a curate in Exeter, Chaplain of Jesus College Oxford, and tutor in Historical Theology at Wycliffe Hall, where he eventually became Vice Principal. In 2005 he helped found St Paul’s Theological Centre, which is now part of St Mellitus College. He mainly teaches historical theology, particularly specialising in the Patristic and Reformation periods. Author of many articles and several books, including The Power of the Cross , The Provocative Church and Spiritual Fitness: Christian Character in a Consumer Culture.

The Revd Canon Professor Charlotte Methuen is Professor of Church History at the University of Glasgow; she is also a Canon Theologian of the Diocese of Leeds (Ripon Cathedral).  Her research interests include the history of the Reformation, with a focus on the German Reformation, and the history of the ecumenical movement, particularly between the First and Second World Wars.  

Charlotte read mathematics at Cambridge, and then worked as a Community Advice Worker in the East End of London before going on to ordination training at Coates Hall, Edinburgh. She took her BD and then her PhD at New College, Edinburgh, with periods of study at the Universities of Heidelberg and Tübingen.

She moved to Glasgow in 2011 from posts at the University of Oxford and Ripon College Cuddesdon. She has also taught at a number of German Universities.  

Charlotte is closely involved in ecumenical and faith and order work:  she serves on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order and on the Scottish Episcopal Church’s inter-Church Relations Committee.  She has previously served on the Church of England’s Faith and Order Commission; the Meissen Commission, which oversees relations between the Church of England and the German Protestant Church; and the Anglican Lutheran International Commission.  She is assistant priest in the Old Catholic parish of Bottrop in Germany and in the Episcopal parish of St Margaret’s Newlands in Glasgow.