Dr Elizabeth Phillips

Director of Education and Engagement

Profile

Dr Elizabeth Phillips is the Woolf Institute's Director of Education and Engagement. She has oversight of the Institute's educational work within the Cambridge Theological Federation, as well as strategic and operational oversight of the Institute's outward-facing work in the community. She seeks to make the academic expertise of Woolf staff and the important findings of Woolf research projects accessible and relevant to a wide variety of external groups, and to improve relations between people of different beliefs and backgrounds in multiple sectors of society. She teaches Political Theology, Jewish-Christian Relations, and Conflict Transformation in the Cambridge Theological Federation.

Beth has worked in the CTF since 2009 as a Tutor and later Lecturer in Christian Ethics and Director of Studies at Westcott House, as well as Research Fellow with the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology. She was a Visiting Scholar with the University of Cambridge's Institute for Criminology 2018-2019 and from 2016-2019 she co-convened and ethnographically researched a course on 'The Good Life and the Good Society' inside a high security prison. At MBIT she completed Flourishing Inside, a project researching the intersections of Catholic social thought and prison chaplaincy. She has contributed teaching to interfaith courses in the CTF and participated in Georgetown University's Building Bridges Seminar (an annual study gathering of Muslim and Christian scholars).

Beth taught Christian Moral and Political Theology for over a decade after completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge – an ethnographic study of Christian Zionism in an American congregation which explored the relationship between eschatology and politics. She is also trained in interpersonal mediation. Her publications include Apocalyptic Theopolitics: Essays and Sermons on Eschatology, Ethics, and Politics (Cascade, 2022), Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2012), and the co-edited volumes T&T Clark Reader in Political Theology (T&T Clark, 2021), and The Cambridge Companion to Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Selected Publications

Apocalyptic Theopolitics: Essays and Sermons on Eschatology, Ethics, and Politics (Cascade, 2022).

T&T Clark Reader in Political Theology ( T&T Clark, 2021).

The Cambridge Companion to Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2012).

'Politics and Political Theology' in The T & T Clark Companion to Christian Ethics (ed.) Tobias Winright (T&T Clark, 2021).

'The Problem of Race in Christianity' in A World of Inequalities: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (ed.) Lucinda Mosher (Georgetown University Press, 2021).

'"It's not Just an Idea": Practicing the Good Life in a High Security Prison' Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 42.4 (2020): 311-330.

'Cultivating the Common Good at the Margins of the Commons: An Ethnographic Portrait of Transformative Pluralism in a High Security Prison' Political Theology 21.4 (2020): 339-357.

(Contributor) 'Conversations on Power: Some Reflections on Building Bridges Seminar 2017' in Power – Divine and Human: Christian and Muslim Perspectives (eds.) Lucinda Mosher and David Marshall (Georgetown University Press, 2020).

'Narrating Catastrophe, Cultivating Hope: Apocalyptic Practices and Theological Virtue' Studies in Christian Ethics 31:1 (1 February 2018): 17-33.

'Anabaptist Theologies' in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, second edition, (eds.) Peter Scott and William Cavanaugh (forthcoming from Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).

'The Church and the Elusive "Public"' in Grace, Governance and Globalization: Theology and Public Life (eds.) Lieven Boeve, Stephan van Erp, and Martin Poulsom (T&T Clark, 2017).

'Virtue Ethics and Social Justice' in Christian Faith and Social Justice: Five Views (ed.) Victor McCracken (Bloomsbury, 2014).

'Saying "Peace" When There is No Peace: An American Christian Zionist Congregation on Peace, Militarism and Settlements' in Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison (eds.) Göran Gunner and Robert Smith (Fortress Press, 2014).

'Charting the "Ethnographic Turn": Theologians and the Study of Christian Congregations' in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography (ed.) Pete Ward (Eerdmans, 2012).

'Teaching Political Theology' four-part blog series. Political Theology Today (August-December 2012).

'Teaching Political Theology' special journal section to mark the publication of Political Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed, in Political Theology 13.6 (December 2012): 670-716.