Miscellaneous

Awards, memberships, educational background, and other information related to my academic work that might be of interest is listed here.

Awards and prizes

2009-12

AHRC – Collaborative Doctoral Award with the National Museum of Scotland (World Cultures) (as part of a team, for a project entitled: ‘Tibetan collections in Scotland 1890-1930: using material culture to establish a critical historiography of missionary and military intent’)

2009-10

Scottish Malawi Partnership – Higher Education Academic Staff Exchange

Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland – research travel grant (Palestine/Israel, Germany)

1999 – 2002

University of Edinburgh – three postgraduate conference grants

1999 – 2000

Faculty of Arts, University of Edinburgh – ‘Small Scholarship Award’

1998

Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland – research travel grant (USA)

United Reformed Church, Committee for Inter-Faith Relations (Jewish Fund) – research grant

1997, 1998, 2000

Miss Elizabeth Drummond Trust, Edinburgh – research grant

1996, 1998, 1999

The Spalding Trust, Stowmarket, Suffolk – research grant

1996, 1997, 1998

The Hope Trust, Edinburgh – research grant

Professional Memberships and activities

Fellow, Royal Historical Society

Founding member of the Critical Religion Research Group

Founder, co-convener: Christians in the Middle East Network

Member: Association of Contemporary Church Historians (Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchliche Zeitgeschichtler)

Member: Ecclesiastical History Society

Member: Scottish Church History Society

Member: Yale-Edinburgh Missions History Group

Education

2003

PhD, Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh
Fields of Study: Middle East political history; British Empire; British and especially Scottish history; religion in modern Palestine/Israel and the wider Middle East; politics of identity, race, gender and class; postcolonial theory; imperialism and resistance; ideological movements; church and missionary history; missionary theology.
Dissertation: Attempting to bring the Gospel Home: Scottish Presbyterian churches’ missionary efforts to the Christians, Jews and Muslims of Palestine, 1839-1917

2001

Masters module, Centre for Human Ecology, Edinburgh
political conflict resolution: Nonviolence: from theory to practice

1990

B.D. II.i, Faculty of Divinity, University of Aberdeen
Also, 1987-8, Theologische Fakultät, Universität Erlangen
Fields of Study: Church History (The Continental Reformers; Wesley and Methodism; Eastern European Churches), Systematic Theology (Philosophical Theology; Spirit, Church and Sacraments; Christian Ethics)
Dissertation (in Church History): Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his resistance to the National Socialist state

Other (a very short list…)

I am not always sure why, but I am (still, just) a member of the Church of Scotland, though I tend to identify more as a Quaker-Presbyterian.

‘What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.’ (Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882)