Theology & joint degrees

I completed my doctorate in Hebrew Bible at the University of Oxford, before taking up an Assistant Professorship in Religion and Judaic Studies at Princeton University in Autumn 2017. In 2019 I returned to Oxford, where I am currently Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible. I am an editor of Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (Bloomsbury T&T Clark)

I am Director of Studies for Theology and Religion and teach undergraduate and graduate students in biblical literature of all periods, with an eye to the literatures and cultures of the wider ancient eastern Mediterranean.

My research is focussed on the Hebrew Bible against the background of ancient Near Eastern literary culture. My work seeks to recover the value concepts and aesthetic judgements of ancient Near Eastern literature through the language of the texts.

Research interests include: Hebrew Bible and its history of interpretation, the comparative method, material culture, embodiment, and women and gender in the ancient Near East. I am currently researching the concepts of beauty and aesthetics in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean.

View all publications on the Faculty of Theology & Religion website

Dr Afifi al-Akiti is a Fellow at Worcester College and as one of the University lecturers on Islam he oversees the teaching provision in the Theology & Religion Faculty. He teaches on all aspects of Islamic Studies.

• Islamic theology, philosophy and science.
• The works of al-Ghazali (d. 1111), especially with regard to the influences from the Greek philosophical tradition and, most notably, the writings of Avicenna (d. 1058).
• The relationship between science and religion in the Islamic world with particular attention to the reception of the rational sciences in the kalam tradition and in madrasa culture.
• Medieval Arabic manuscripts and Moroccan religious lithographs (Hajariyyat).
• Medieval Islamic astronomy (`ilm al-falak).
• Islamic law, primarily the Shafi’i school.

I have been at Worcester for more than ten years and teach papers at all stages of our undergraduate courses in Theology & Religion and Philosophy & Theology. I specialise in modern theology and the history of doctrine, with a particular interest in theology and the arts, particularly poetry, film and music. I am the author of Grace (SCM 2013) and editor, with John Barton, of The New Testament and the Church (Bloomsbury 2015), and I have published articles and chapters on systematic and doctrinal theology, as well as on the Oxford Movement and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. I am Reviews Editor of the journal New Blackfriars. I am ordained in the Church of England and serve as Associate Archdeacon of Oxford. I am married to Beatrice, who teaches English Literature at Trinity College, and we have two sons. My enthusiasms include wine, poetry, Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, Wagner, Wittgenstein and Queens Park Rangers football club.

After graduating from Keble College with a BA in Theology in 2004, Mary pursued her MSt and DPhil under the supervision of Prof. Christopher Tuckett, researching the portrayals of the Pharisees in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. Having completed a PGCE in secondary education, Mary worked for a time as a Religious Studies teacher before returning to the University as a Departmental Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religion (2012-2016) and Fellow and Tutor in Theology at St Benet’s Hall (2012-2022). In 2016 Mary took up her current position as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Outreach and is a lecturer at Worcester College.

The New Testament; particularly the Gospels and Acts; the context of the New Testament in First Century Judaism; the portrayal of Jews and Judaism in New Testament Texts; the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity; “redaction-critical” approaches to the interpretation of New Testament and other early Christian and ancient Jewish texts.

• ‘The New Testament’ in Katherine J. Dell (ed), The Biblical World (2nd ed; Abingdon: Routledge, 2022).
• ‘Josephus and Mark 2:13-3:6: Controversies with the scribes and Pharisees’ in Blackwell, Ben C., Goodrich, John K. and Maston, Jason (eds), Reading Mark in Context: Jesus and Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 55-61.
• ‘Becoming “Another”: Nicodemus and his relationships in the Fourth Gospel’ in Schmiedel, U. and Matarazzo Jr, J.M. (eds), Dynamics of Difference: Christianity and Alterity. A Festschrift for Werner G. Jeanrond (London: Bloomsbury, T&T Clark, 2015), 33-40.
• ‘The Portrayals of the Pharisees in the Gospels and Acts’ (FRLANT 254; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
• ‘“Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” A Brief Study of Luke 14.15 in its Context’ in Tuckett (ed), Feasts and Festivals (Leuven: Peeters, 2009).

Dr Peramatzis’ specialities are ancient philosophy, especially Aristotle’s metaphysics, logic and epistemology and Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology.

My work falls mainly within contemporary philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of action. Most of my research relates either to linguistic (especially semantic) knowledge or to practical knowledge and skill, and sometimes to connections between these. More broadly, my work engages with theories of normativity in relation to skill, factual knowledge, thought and reasoning, and linguistic communication. I also have a general interest in the work of Gilbert Ryle, especially his relatively neglected work on thinking and improvisation.

I teach the undergraduate finals papers in Knowledge and Reality, Philosophy of Logic and Language, Wittgenstein, Philosophy of Mind, and Ethics. I will also be teaching first-year General Philosophy and Introduction to Logic. In Michaelmas 2019, I will be teaching a graduate (BPhil) class on Knowledge, Reason and Action, with Prof. John Hyman.

I studied Philosophy and Computer Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and then moved to Scotland to pursue a PhD in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. My doctoral studies were supported by PETAF (Perspectival Thoughts and Facts), as part of the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (European Commission Funding). I graduated with a thesis on Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mathematics under the supervision of Sarah Broadie and Katherine Hawley. In 2015, I moved to Oxford to start as a stipendiary lecturer in philosophy at Wadham and St Hilda’s Colleges while also maintaining a part-time position as “Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin” (≅ fixed-term lecturer) at Bonn University, Germany. My research focuses on the nature of mathematical objects in Aristotle and Plato, with a particular interest in how their views tie in with their more general views in epistemology and ontology.

Since 2016, I have been a stipendiary lecturer in philosophy at Worcester College, Oxford, while also teaching casually for several Oxford Colleges and visiting student programmes. I teach a wide range of philosophy papers including General Philosophy, Plato’s Meno and Euthyphro (Greek), Early Greek Philosophy (Greek), Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic, Aristotle on Nature, Life and Mind (Greek/translation), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Greek/trans), Plato’s Republic (Greek/trans), Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist (Greek/trans), Knowledge & Reality, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind, Early Modern Philosophy, Kant, Ethics and Feminist Philosophy.