Kenneth Parker completed his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in 1984, under the direction of Professor Eamon Duffy. His research interest in John Henry Newman began during his post-doctoral studies at the University of Fribourg in the late 1980s. Dr. Parker has taught at the University of Alabama and Westmont College, and served in the historical theology Ph.D. program at Saint Louis University for twenty-five years. In 2014 the College of Arts and Sciences at SLU named him the Steber Professor in Theological Studies. While serving as interim Executive Director at the National Institute for Newman Studies in 2017, Dr. Parker was invited to take up the Ryan Endowed Chair for Newman Studies at Duquesne University. He is author or editor of seven volumes and numerous essays and articles. He has served as Editor of the Newman Studies Journal since 2016.

In 2020, Professor Parker became the founding chair of the Catholic Studies Department at Duquesne University. He has also facilitated the emergence of a national network of more than 25 universities and colleges, known as the Catholic Studies Consortium, and has created the Newman inspired “Catholic Studies in Rome” program, in collaboration with the Pontifical Irish College and the Gregorian University. 

Christopher Cimorelli is the Director of the National Institute for Newman Studies and Associate Editor of the Newman Studies Journal. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Theology and Religious Studies from Villanova University. Before beginning advanced graduate work, he was the Editorial Assistant of Commonweal Magazine (2008-2010). He holds a master’s degree in Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion (2011) and a doctorate in Theology (2015) from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), where he studied under the Newman scholar, Prof. Dr. Terrence Merrigan. Prior to working at the Institute, he was an Assistant Professor of Theology at Caldwell University (2016-2020), where he served as chair of the Department of Theology and Philosophy in 2020. He is the author of the monograph, John Henry Newman’s Theology of History: Historical Consciousness, ‘Theological Imaginaries’, and the Development of Tradition (Peeters, 2017) and the co-editor of Salvation in the World: The Crossroads of Public Theology (Bloomsbury, 2017). He has varied research interests, including Newman studies, doctrinal development, views of doctrine and the magisterium, apophatic theology, spirituality, and ecotheology

Elizabeth Huddleston is the Head of Research and Publications at the National Institute for Newman Studies and Associate Editor for the Newman Studies Journal. She holds a bachelor's degree in Music Education from the University of Georgia and a master's degree in Theological Studies from the University of Dayton, and a doctorate in Theology also from the University of Dayton. Her dissertation is entitled, Divine Revelation as Rectrix Stella: The Evolution of Wilfrid Ward's Doctrine of Divine Revelation, which was completed in 2019 under the direction of Dr. William L. Portier. Dr. Huddleston's research interests include the reception of Newman's doctrine of revelation in nineteenth and twentieth-century theology, the relationship between music and theology, ecumenical and inter-faith conversations, and the intersection of dogmatic theology with Christian mysticism.

Dr. Peter Nockles was, until his retirement in September 2016, a librarian and curator in the Department of Rare Books and Maps, Special Collections, in the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. He remains an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester and has acted as University of Manchester internal examiner for Ph.D. theses, and over many years has been an external examiner at many universities, globally, including in the USA and Belgium. He was a Visiting Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford, 2006-2011, and was a major contributor to Oriel College: a History (Oxford University Press, 2013). He was an Erasmus Institute Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, in 2000. In March 2013 he gave the De Lubac Lecture at St. Louis University Missouri on “An Oxonian ‘Idea’ of a University: John Henry Newman’s Formative Oriel College Experience.” He is the author of The Oxford Movement in Context (Cambridge University Press, 1994, paperback 1997) and has contributed to the nineteenth-century volume (6) of the History of the University of Oxford (1997) and to A History of Canterbury Cathedral (Oxford University Press, 1995). He is the author of numerous articles and research papers on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British religious history, and has given lectures and seminars widely in Britain, Europe (France, Germany, and Sweden), and the United States. He contributed an essay to Newman In his Time (Gracewing, 2007) and has edited and contributed to a volume of essays entitled Reinventing the Reformation in the Nineteenth Century in a themed issue of The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 90, no. 1 (Spring 2014). He was the co-editor of The Oxford Movement, Europe and the Wider World, 1833-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and was one of the three editors of The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement published by Oxford University Press in 2017. He was a contributor to an important volume of essays, Receptions of Newman, ed. Benjamin King and Frederick Aquino published by Oxford University Press in 2015. He was also a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. He has contributed to the recently published (Brill, 2021) first volume in an international multi-volume scholarly enterprise entitled “Questioning Ecumenis,” organized by the Pope John XXIII Foundation in Bologna. He has contributed numerous articles to the fourth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church 2 vols. (2021). He was the recipient of the Gaillot Award in 2020 for his contribution to Newman studies. He has contributed articles to the NSJ.

Additionally, Nockles was the UK Conference Director of the Catholic Record Society, 1995-2007; is on the Council of the Catholic Record Society; helped organize the North-West Catholic Writers’ Guild, which met monthly at the University Catholic chaplaincy of the University of Manchester; is an active member of the Ecclesiastical History Society and the Church of England Record Society, and was a Trustee of the Catholic National Library. He is also a Fellow of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre (MWRC).

Robert was born in Sydney, raised in Hobart, and completed his tertiary studies in Perth. He earned his PhD in Church History from Murdoch University in 2012 under the supervision of Professor Rowan Strong. Before joining the Catholic Institute of Sydney (CIS) in 2016, he taught at several institutions in Western Australia, including the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle. At CIS he is Professor Extraordinarius in Church History, and from 2016 to 2025 he also served as Chair of the Research Committee, while holding the role of Assistant Dean (Academic) between 2022 and 2025.

His research centers on nineteenth-century Britain, with particular emphasis on John Henry Newman (1801–90) and the Oxford Movement (1833–45), alongside wider interests in the interplay of theology and history. In recognition of his contributions, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2022. He is also a member of the Religious History Association, the Ecclesiastical History Society of Great Britain, and the Australian Catholic Historical Society, and serves on the editorial board of the Australasian Catholic Record.

Frederick D. Aquino is Professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He specializes in religious epistemology, the epistemology of theology, spiritual perception, John Henry Newman, and Maximus the Confessor. Some of his publications include Communities of Informed Judgment (Catholic University of America Press, 2004), An Integrative Habit of Mind (Northern University Press, 2012), Receptions of Newman (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-edited with Benjamin J. King, The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology (Oxford University Press, 2017), co-edited with William J. Abraham, The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-edited with Benjamin J. King, and Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, co-edited with Paul Gavrilyuk (Oxford University Press, 2022). His current projects focus on the relevance of John Henry Newman’s thought for issues in contemporary epistemology and other areas of philosophy (e.g., philosophy of religion, moral philosophy). 

Claus Arnold is Professor of Medieval and Modern Church History at the University of Mainz. He studied Theology at Tübingen and Oxford (198–1992) and was a teaching and research assistant with Hubert Wolf in Frankfurt and Münster (1992–2003). He holds a canonical doctorate in Theology from Frankfurt-Sankt-Georgen (1997) and achieved Habilitation at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Münster in 2003. From 2004 until 2014 he was a tenured professor of Church History at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

Rosario Athié has dedicated her studies to philosophy, and has been a Research Professor in the Humanities Department of the Universidad Panamericana, Campus Guadalajara (Mexico), where she taught Philosophy for 40 years. She is currently retired but continues to investigate and promote the thought of John Henry Newman through classes at the Major Seminary of Guadalajara, publications, and organizing the Newman Circle. She received a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Navarra, Spain, in 1998. The title of her thesis is: Assent in J. H. Newman. The same university published her doctoral research in Cuadernos del Anuario Filosófico. Dr. Athié received fellowships at the National Institute of Newman Studies (2004 and 2016) and has completed other work at the Friends of Newman International Center in Littlemore, Oxford. She also published a translation of Ian Ker's biography of Newman (John Henry Newman. A biography, Palabra, Spain, 2010), along with other articles related to John Henry Newman's philosophical thought. She is the first president of the Newman Circle (www.circulonewman.com), whose goal is to introduce Newman, his thought, and its nineteenth-century English historical context to Spanish-speaking people. As a result of the III John Henry Newman International Colloquium, its sources and commentators, the book John Henry Newman. Doctor, Pastor, Santo was published in Spain, edited by Juan Alonso (2022), the final chapter entitled, “Actualidad de Newman,” was contributed by Dr. Athié. Dr. Athié is a member of the Saint John Henry Newman Association since 2001 and of the Spanish Association of Personalism since 2004.

Colin Barr holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and has held academic appointments in Ireland, the United States, and Scotland. He has published several books, including Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman, and the Catholic University of Ireland, 1845–65 (2003), The European Culture Wars in Ireland: The Callan Schools Affair 1868–81 (2012), and Ireland's Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking world, 1829–1914 (2020). He is also the co-editor of Nation/Nazione: Irish Nationalism and the Italian Risorgimento (2014, with Michele Finelli and Anne O'Connor) and Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks, 1750–1950 (2015, with Hilary M. Carey). He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has been a visiting fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is presently Professor of Modern Irish History and Director of the Clingen Family Center for the Study of Modern Ireland at the University of Notre Dame.

Shaun Blanchard is Lecturer in Theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Fremantle campus, Western Australia). Shaun was Senior Research Fellow at NINS and Associate Editor of the NSJ from 2021 to 2023, after three years as Assistant Professor of Theology at Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University in Baton Rouge, LA. Shaun writes on a variety of topics in early modern and modern Catholicism. He is the author of The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II (OUP, 2020). With Ulrich Lehner, he co-edited The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology (CUA, 2021) and, with Stephen Bullivant, co-wrote Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2023). Forthcoming works include From Port-Royal to Pistoia: A Jansenist Anthology in Translation (CUA, 2024). Shaun's essays have appeared in academic journals like Theological Studies and Newman Studies Journal, and in popular outlets like Commonweal, The Tablet, and Notre Dame's Church Life Journal.

Jonathan Martin Ciraulo is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at the Catholic University of America. He completed his PhD at the University of Notre Dame in 2018. His research focuses on topics such as sacramental theology, the theology of tradition, and the relationship between philosophy and theology and figures such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, John Henry Newman, and Maurice Blondel. He is the author of The Eucharistic Form of God: Hans Urs von Balthasar's Sacramental Theology (Notre Dame, 2022) and articles in journals such as Newman Studies Journal, Modern Theology, Theological Studies, and Communio. He is editor of The New Ressourcement.

Marial Corona (Philosophy Ph.D., University of Navarra, 2020 & Theology Baccalaureate, Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, 2014) has found in J. H. Newman a trustworthy guide as she explores themes related to knowledge, rationality, and truth. In her dissertation, published by CUA Press as The Philosophy of John Henry Newman and Pragmatism: A Comparison, she placed J. H. Newman in dialogue with pragmatist philosophers, particularly those who follow the line initiated by C. S. Peirce and found fruitful lines of encounter. She continues her research looking for ways to bring Newman’s thought to a more prominent place in philosophical discourse. She is currently the Program Coordinator for the Cultural Forum at the Lumen Christi Institute in Chicago. She has published her work in the Newman Studies Journal, the Journal of Disability and Religion, and Ecclesia.

Dr. John Crosby studied at Georgetown University, where he received a BA and the University of Salzburg where he received his Ph.D. Before landing at Franciscan University of Steubenville in 1990 he taught at the University of Dallas and later held the Prince Franz Josef and Princess Gina Chair for Ethics at the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. He has previously served as chair of the philosophy department at Franciscan University of Steubenville, as well as the director of the MA Philosophy Program, a program he helped found. In 1997 he received Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is a member of American Catholic Philosophical Association, where he has also served on the Executive Committee; the American Philosophical Association; the Newman Association of America; and the University Faculty for Life.

Professor Crosby is known internationally for his work on John Henry Newman, Max Scheler, Karol Wojtyła, and Dietrich von Hildebrand. He has made a significant contribution to the area of philosophical anthropology or philosophy of the human person and has played a major role in the contemporary interest and discussion of that field through his two books, The Selfhood of the Human Person and Personalist Papers each published by Catholic University of America Press. He has also worked in the areas of ethics, phenomenological realism, and axiology, or value theory.

Dr. Ono Ekeh is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT. Dr. Ekeh received a BS in Business Administration from Daemen College in Amherst, NY. His master's and doctorate degrees in historical and systematic theology are from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. His dissertation was a comparative study of John Henry Newman and Edmund Husserl. Dr. Ekeh and his wife Amy live in Connecticut with their four children.

Logan Paul Gage is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Catholic Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville. He holds a BA in philosophy, history, and American studies from Whitworth College, and an MA and PhD in philosophy from Baylor University. His scholarly research focuses primarily on epistemology, natural theology, and the thought of John Henry Newman.

Combining these interests, he is the co-author (with Dr. Frederick D. Aquino) of several articles on the epistemology of John Henry Newman. Their work has appeared in journals such as the Newman Studies Journal, the Heythrop Journal, and American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly as well as in edited volumes such as John Henry Newman and Contemporary Philosophy (Routledge, 2025) and John Henry Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent: A Critical Guide (Emmaus Academic, 2025). Drs. Gage and Aquino are currently at work on a forthcoming volume from Cambridge University Press entitled Newman and the Rationality of Religious Belief.

Sebastian Gałecki, Ph.D. in philosophy, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philology and History at the Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa and Lecturer at the Pontifical University in Cracow. Gałecki was a resident scholar at the National Institute for Newman Studies (2009, 2014) and visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame (2014). He is author of Debate on Conscience: John Henry Newman's Philosophy of Morality (in Polish, Krakow, 2012) and many papers on ethics, bioethics, history of ideas, and political philosophy. He has published on Newman's ethics, theory of conscience, epistemology, and has presented Newman's theory of the development of doctrine as a useful tool for a history of ideas. Currently he is working on a book devoted to a Christian ethics for a post-Christian age, in which he tries to reconcile J. H. Newman's ethics of conscience, Alasdair MacIntyre's virtue ethics, and John Finnis's new natural law theory.

Brian W. Hughes received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston College where he taught for a number of years in the Perspectives Program. Currently, he serves as Professor of the Theology in the Theology and Pastoral Ministry program at the University of Saint Mary, Leavenworth, Kansas. He is author of Saving Wisdom: Theology in the Christian University (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011). He is also co-editor with John Connolly, Newman and Life in the Spirit: Theological Reflections on Spirituality for Today. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2014). His recent volume, co-edited with Danielle Nussberger, is titled John Henry Newman and the Crisis of Modernity (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2018).

Rev. Dr. Benjamin King is the Academic Dean and Duncalf-Villavoso Professor of Church History of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX. He holds degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Harvard, and Durham (UK). He is the author of two books and the co-editor of two others. His first book, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers (Oxford, 2009) won a Templeton Award for Theological Promise. His second book is The Oxford Movement and the People of God: Enslavement, Education, and Empire (Oxford, 2025). With Frederick Aquino, he co-edited Receptions of Newman (Oxford, 2015) and The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford, 2018). He has written numerous articles and lectured internationally on Newman. His current areas of research are the Oxford Movement and its role across the Anglican Communion, and the Episcopal Church’s historic entanglement with slavery. He is an ordained Episcopal priest.

Prof. Karen Kilby holds the Bede Chair of Catholic Theology at Durham University. She has written monographs on Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and most recently published God, Evil and the Limits of Theology with T+T Clark.  She is currently exploring the status of suffering in Christian Theology. 

The Revd. Canon Dr. William Lamb is the Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, and an Honorary Canon of Christ Church Cathedral. After reading Theology at Balliol College in the University of Oxford, he trained for ministry in the Church of England at Westcott House in Cambridge, where he completed further studies at Peterhouse in the University of Cambridge. Ordained in 1995, he served as a curate at Halifax Minster before serving as a parish priest in South Yorkshire. During this period, he also taught homiletics at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield. In 2001, he became the Anglican Chaplain at the University of Sheffield, where he completed his doctoral studies. From 2005 until 2010, he was also a Canon Residentiary of Sheffield Cathedral.

In 2010, he became the Vice-Principal of Westcott House, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, where he taught New Testament Studies. He returned to Oxford in 2017. From 2017–2024, he served as the Chair of St. Augustine’s Foundation, which funds theological education in the Anglican Communion. He is an Associate Member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and a Supernumerary Fellow of Harris Manchester College in the University of Oxford. He has a particular interest in the preaching ministry of St. John Henry Newman.

Matthew Levering holds the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary.  He is the author or co-author of over thirty books, including Newman on Doctrinal Corruption. He is currently at work on a multi-volume dogmatics, whose first five volumes have appeared (most recently Engaging the Doctrine of Israel). He is the editor or co-editor of over twenty books. He is the co-editor of two quarterly journals of theology: Nova et Vetera and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. He co-founded the Chicago Theological Initiative in 2015. The recipient of various awards for his scholarship and service, he is the past president (2021–2022) of the Academy of Catholic Theology.  

Ryan Marr is the Academic Dean at Mercy College of Health Sciences in Des Moines, IA. He is the author of To Be Perfect Is to Have Changed Often: The Development of John Henry Newman's Ecclesiological Outlook, 1845-1877 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and has also contributed essays to Newman and Life in the Spirit (Fortress Press, 2014), Learning from All the Faithful (Pickwick, 2016), The Fullness of Divine Worship (CUA Press, 2018), and The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford University Press, 2018). His most recent book, Seeking God with Saint John Henry Newman, was published by Our Sunday Visitor in 2020. Dr. Marr's research interests include the life and writings of Newman, ecclesiology, and the reception of conciliar documents.

Jennifer Newsome Martin is the John J. Cavanaugh Associate Professor of Humanities in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She also serves as the Director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. She is a systematic theologian with areas of interest in 19th and 20th century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought, John Henry Newman, trinitarian theology, theological aesthetics, religion and literature, ressourcement theology, and the nature of religious tradition. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (University of Notre Dame Press), was one of ten winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. Over twenty-five articles and book chapters have appeared in such venues as Modern Theology, Communio: International Catholic Review, The Newman Studies Journal, International Journal of Systematic Theology, and in a number of edited volumes and collections of essays. She serves on the editorial boards of Religion & Literature, Communio, and the University of Notre Dame Press.

Mark McInroy received his doctorate in historical and systematic theology from Harvard Divinity School, and after postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge, he accepted a position at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota), where he is Associate Professor of Theology and Co-Director of the Claritas Initiative, a newly established initiative to promote the appreciation of beauty, goodness, and truth. He is the author of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2014), for which he received in 2015 the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise (formerly the John Templeton Award for Theological Promise), an internationally assessed award administered through the University of Heidelberg. He is co-editor of The Christian Theological Tradition, 4th ed. (Routledge, 2019), Image as Theology: The Power of Art in Shaping Christian Thought, Devotion, and Imagination (Brepols, 2022), and The Oxford Handbook of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). He has interests in modern Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theologies, especially the modern retrievals and reformulations of patristic, medieval, and Reformation theologoumena. Other areas of interest include theological aesthetics, contemporary philosophy of religion, continental philosophy, mystical theology, philosophies and theologies of perception, ecumenical theology, and East-West relations in Christianity. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on the theological reception of John Henry Newman's thought, particularly Newman's view of the development of doctrine, his model of the relationship between faith and reason, and his understanding of justification and deification.

Andrew Meszaros is Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the Pontifical University, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth (Ireland), where he has been teaching for four years. He holds degrees from Boston College, the University of Oxford, and the Catholic University of Louvain (KU Leuven). He came to Maynooth after a year of post-doctoral research at the University of Vienna. A version of his doctoral dissertation was published as The Prophetic Church: History and Doctrinal Development in John Henry Newman and Yves Congar (OUP, 2016). In addition to Newman studies, his interests include Thomas Aquinas and his nineteenthand twentieth-century interpreters.

Matt Muller is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Director for Programs at the Gregorian Institute at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. He completed his Ph.D. in historical theology from Saint Louis University in May 2017. His dissertation was on Newman's understanding of biblical inspiration in his Anglican years. He was first introduced to Newman while pursuing a master's degree in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota. He wrote his master's thesis under the direction of the late Don Briel on the role of imagination in Newman's writings on education. After graduating from Benedictine in 2006, he served for three years as a missionary with FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) at the University of Illinois. He and his wife, Jordan, have three children: Anthony, Owen, and Juliana.

Cyril O'Regan is the Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in systematic and historical theology, with specific interests in the intersection of continental philosophy and theology, religion and literature, mystical theology, and postmodern thought. Professor O'Regan received bachelor's and master's degrees from University College Dublin, and master of arts, master of philosophy, and doctoral degrees from Yale University. Professor O'Regan's most recent book is Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar's Response to Philosophical Modernity. Volume 1: Hegel. Earlier books include The Heterodox Hegel, Gnostic Return in Modernity and Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme's Haunted Narrative. He has published numerous articles on such topics as the nature of tradition, negative theology, the sources of Hegel's thought and Hegel as a theological source.

Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini is Associate Professor in Latin at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which he joined in 2021, after five beautiful years of teaching in St. Andrews (2016–2021), research fellowships at Magdalen College Oxford (2013–2015), and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2016). He holds a BA and an MA in Classics from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford, and he is a member of the RSE Young Academy Scotland and the Young Academy of Europe.

He worked as an assistant editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin,  and has published especially on Latin language and literature, philosophy of language, and the theory of fiction, ancient and modern, including above all Tolkien’s views on the “mystery of literary creation.” He is the Tolkien Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies, and has curated exhibitions on John Henry Newman (2011, 2014), Oscar Wilde (2015) and JRR Tolkien (2021).

Thomas Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English, with secondary appointments in the Department of Germanic Language & Literatures and the Divinity School at Duke University. He has published some fifty essays on literary and philosophical subjects ranging from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, as well as some twenty book reviews. Additionally, he has edited several essay collections and special journal issues, as well as two volumes of writings by Hölderlin and Schelling in English translation. His more recent monographs include Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy, 1790–1840 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) and Minding the Modern: Intellectual Traditions, Human Agency, and Responsible Knowledge (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013). Most recently, he co-edited a special issue of Stanford Republic of Letters and an essay collection on Judgment & Action (Northwestern).

William L. Portier is Professor Emeritus at the University of Dayton and Theologian in Residence at Mount St. Mary’s University, MD, where he taught from 1979 to 2003. From 2003 to 2021, he taught at the University of Dayton, where he served as Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology (2004-2021) and Ph.D. Program Director (2012-2020) in the Department of Religious Studies. He is an historical theologian who works in the areas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic thought,  especially, but not exclusively, in the United States. He has written four books and edited or co-edited four others. His two latest books are Divided Friends: Portraits of the Roman Catholic Modernist Crisis in the United States (2013) and Every Catholic An Apostle: A Life of Thomas A. Judge, CM, 1868-1933 (2017), both from The Catholic University of America Press. The latter was translated into Spanish in 2019. In 2017 Derek C. Hatch and Timothy R. Gabrielli edited Weaving the American Catholic Tapestry: Essays in Honor of William L. Portier (Pickwick Publications).

James M. Pribek, SJ, is an associate professor of English at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, specializing in modern Irish literature. For fourteen years he worked at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where in addition to providing a wide range of English courses, he taught in the Honors and Catholic Studies Programs. He hold degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gonzaga University, and Weston Jesuit School of Theology. His doctoral dissertation at University College Dublin (2005) traced the influence of Cardinal Newman on James Joyce; since then he has researched, presented, and published on Newman's influence on other notable 19th and 20th century Irish, British, and American writers. He has taught in Dublin, Seattle, and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He also assists in parishes and campus ministries.

Víctor García Ruiz  (Madrid, 1959) is Professor of Spanish at the University of Navarra, Spain. His main concern in Newman studies has been making him better known in the Spanish-speaking world. Alone and with others, he has published editions and translations of Newman’s Works, which were much needed in the early 1990s. These include his novels Perder y ganar (1994), and Calixta (1998); and key works such as Apologia pro Vita Sua (1996), Carta al Duque de Norfolk (1996, New edition and complete translation, 2022), his sermons: Esperando a Cristo (1996), Sermones parroquiales (8 vols. 2007–2015), and La idea de la Universidad: temas universitarios tratados en lecciones y ensayos ocasionales (2014). Ruiz’s keen interest in Newman’s letter-writing has produced Cartas y diarios (1996), Suyo con afecto: autobiografía epistolar de John Henry Newman (2002), and John Henry Newman: el viaje al Mediterráneo de 1833 (2019). His latest books are a post-canonisation biography, San John Henry Newman: ensayo biográfico (San Pablo, 2020), and the complete edition of La idea de la universidad (2025).

C. Michael Shea completed his undergraduate work at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and later earned an MA and Ph.D. in historical theology at Saint Louis University in Saint Louis, Missouri. He is the author of the book Newman's Early Roman Catholic Legacy 1845–1854, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, as well as numerous articles and essays on Newman and other topics related to nineteenth and twentieth-century theology. Dr. Shea serves as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of the Core at Seton Hall University.

Paul Shrimpton is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and has taught at Magdalen College School, Oxford for nearly forty years. His first book, A Catholic Eton? Newman’s Oratory School (Gracewing, 2005), was based on his PhD thesis and was followed by the ‘Making of Men’: The Idea and Reality of Newman’s University in Oxford and Dublin (Gracewing, 2015). He has also written about the influence of Newman on the students of the White Rose resistance in Nazi Germany in Conscience before Conformity: Hans and Sophie School and the White Rose Resistance in Nazi Germany (Gracewing, 2018). Recently he edited two volumes of Newman’s unpublished university papers, My Campaign in Ireland, Parts I & II, both of which are critical editions (Gracewing, 2021/2022). He edited the festschrift, Lead Kindly Light: Essays in Homage for Ian Ker (Gracewing, 2022). His most recent volume, ‘The Most Dangerous Man in England’: Newman and the Laity (Word on Fire Academic), will appear in October 2025. Since Newman’s canonization, he has run a Newman reading group in Oxford.

Dr. Lauren Spohn is an academic, writer, and filmmaker and Assistant Professor in Intellectual History at the University of Texas, Austin. After studying English literature at Harvard College, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa (2020), Lauren went on to study intellectual history at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She graduated with a master’s with Distinction (2021) and successfully defended her DPhil dissertation in Theology at Oriel College (2025), where her research focused on the role of analogy in the thought of St. John Henry Newman. Her academic research interests constellate around questions of philosophical anthropology, theology and literature, and the meaning of human community, specifically within modern Anglo-American culture and the Catholic intellectual tradition. During her time in graduate school, she was also named a Middle Reader of the Canterbury Institute and visiting research fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture.

Lauren’s creative work has been featured in a variety of domestic and international outlets, including The New Atlantis, The American Oxonian, and The Catholic Herald. Her films and essays explore diverse ways of living out the human quest for transcendence, seeking God in-and-beyond the world of history and daily experience—from the jazz clubs in Lviv, Ukraine, to the traditional tea houses of Kanazawa, Japan, and the clear skies above the clouds. Outside reading and writing, Lauren has worked stints in finance and educational non-profits and is also an FAA-certified private pilot and avid trail runner.

Charles J. T. Talar is Professor of Church History at the Graduate School of Theology, University of Saint Thomas, Houston, TX. He has published extensively in Roman Catholic Modernism and in nineteenth-century theology more broadly. Currently he serves as vice-president of the Société Internationale d'Etudes sur Alfred Loisy, a Related Scholarly Organization of the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Rebekah Lamb Varela is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Theology and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews (Scotland, United Kingdom), the Director of Undergraduate Teaching in the School of Divinity, and a staff member of The Institute of Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA). Prior to joining St. Andrews, she was an inaugural Étienne Gilson Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. She specializes in religion and literature in late modernity, with an emphasis on the relationships between aesthetics, ethics, and formation.

With the support of an RSE Collaboration Grant, Rebekah is co-editing the first Oxford Handbook of Catholic Women Writers and her book, Redressing Discontents: Joy and Hope in Late Modern Writing, is forthcoming in 2026 with McGill-Queens University Press. This book significantly features Newman’s theology of joy, especially as expressed through his emulation of St. Philip Neri. Rebekah’s recent publications include articles on Newman’s eschatological view of art (Nova et Vetera), his Marian understanding of history (Religion and Literature), and various articles, encyclopedia entries, handbook and companion entries, and book chapters in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, New Blackfriars, Theology in Scotland, Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context, Magnificat, Church Life Journal, and elsewhere. Rebekah is a trustee of the Christian Heritage Centre (CHC) at Stonyhurst and also serves on the editorial board of CTS Academic.

Geertjan Zuijdwegt is Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (KU Leuven) and at the Faculty of Law and Criminology (KU Leuven). Together with Pieter De Witte, he occupies the Endowed Chair for Detention, Meaning, and Society, where he explores the history, ethics, and theology of punishment and the prison through research and educational projects. Geertjan is an expert in the thought of John Henry Newman (1801–1890). He has published extensively on Newman's life, theology, and philosophy, seeking a balance between theological and historical approaches. In 2022, he published the first comprehensive intellectual biography of the early Newman: An Evangelical Adrift: The Making of John Henry Newman's Theology, with CUA Press. He has also published on Vatican II, medieval theology, and in philosophy. One day a week, Geertjan works as a lay chaplain in Leuven Central Prison.