Centre for Theology and the Arts
The Arts and Theology in Conversation
Director: Rev Dr Dominic White OP
- An intellectually rigorous conversation about the Arts as a key element of Theology, the creative person imaging the creator God, the God made visible in the incarnation, “both an encouragement and a challenge to Christians” (St John Paul II, Letter to Artists).
- The arts and theology in conversation with wider society in our shared experience of depth, resonance, uplift and the search for meaning.
- Every event involves a real experience of art, in whatever medium (visual, poetry, music, theatre) – embodied experience and scholarship together.
Notes on the image: Virgin and Child by Janet Boulton
Upcoming events
2025-26 Seminar series
All seminars take place at 2 pm in the Aula at Blackfriars, normally lasting 90 minutes (2 hours for 21 November).
Please contact Rev Dr Dominic White for more details.
Michaelmas Term
Friday 31 October
Professor Michael Scott, Senior Dean, Blackfriars Hall: War, Peace and Shakespeare
Friday 21 November
Dr Silvie Jacobi, Visiting Lecturer, King’s College, London: Tracing Sacred Topographies – A Situationalist Exploration at Oxford Blackfriars Priory
2 hours’ duration. Registration is necessary, as artistic materials will be supplied: contact Rev Dr Dominic White.
Hilary Term
Friday 30 January
Dr Clare Broome Saunders, Senior Tutor, Blackfriars Hall, ‘It is not an allegory but the Te Deum’: Phoebe Anna Traquair, art, and the Divine’
Friday 20 February
Michelle Castelletti FRSA, New College, Oxford, Director of the Oxford Festival of the Arts: Per Artem ad Deum. Music as spiritual theology.
Trinity Term
Friday 1 May
Prof Christian Leitmeir, Associate Professor in Music, University of Oxford: From Sign to Sound: Towards an Aesthetic Presence of Dead Music
Friday 29 May
Dr Cynthia Liu, Junior Research Fellow, Blackfriars Hall: Poetry and Translation in Sino-European ‘Classical’ Exchange
Previous events
The Centre for Theology and the Arts was launched at Blackfriars on 1 July 2025 at a joint conference between Blackfriars Hall and the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, Thomism, Creativity and the Arts: Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. It included a keynote lecture by the distinguished composer Sir James MacMillan, and included live music by him, Dominic White, Peter Carter and other composers
- Watch on YouTube
- The proceedings of the conference will be published in a future volume of New Blackfriars.