Trinity Appoints New Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr Scott Kirkland has been appointed as inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow for the Trinity College Theological School commencing in February 2018.<br /> &nbsp;

Scott holds a BMin from Laidlaw College in Auckland, a GradDipTheol from Laidlaw-Carey Graduate School and a PhD from the University of Newcastle.
 
In 2016, he published his first book, Into the Far Country: Karl Barth and the Modern Subject. Scott has also published in excess of 10 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has a further co-authored book in-press, along with a second monograph due for completion in 2019.
 
Scott is excited by the prospect of joining the Theological School having previously spent time at Trinity as an honorary postdoctoral research associate.  
 
‘In an academic career in theology it is rare privilege to be provided with such a wonderful opportunity to spend a sustained period of time wholly devoted to research,’ says Scott. ‘It is even more rare to be able to do so in a school where there is a genuine mandate to produce top quality intellectual work that functions in the service of the common good and the training of thoughtful, engaged, students of theology,’ he says.
 
Scott argues in a time of increased political polarisation and the emergence of authoritarian leaders, ‘theology has to find a way of speaking in this moment that is not simply reactionary, but is genuinely politically constructive.’
 
‘We live in times where there is continual risk that discourses in universities become insulated from one another, where imaginative engagement across disciplines is increasingly difficult… Theology is important for me not because it holds all the answers to our problems, which it doesn’t, but because it offers the promise and hope of imaginative engagement with them,’ says Scott. 
 
In 2017, Scott worked at the ACU, as a research assistant in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry. Acting Dean of the Theological School, the Revd Professor Mark Lindsay says, ‘We are fortunate to have been able to lure him away!’
 
Trinity looks forward to welcoming Scott to the College soon.
 
29 Jan 2018
Category: People