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.
