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
Theology & the Arts Seminars 2026-27
Fridays 2pm unless otherwise stated.
Michaelmas Term
Friday 23 October, 2pm – 4pm
The Response of Praise: A Recital Seminar on Psalm 148
The year will launch on Friday 23 October, 2-4 pm, with a special seminar-recital on musical and poetic explorations of psalms of praise. The seminar will feature a new setting of Psalm 148 for soprano and piano commissioned from Fr Dominic White OP by the Kirby Laing Foundation, sung by soprano Lizzy Spight, with responses from composers and poets Malcolm Atkins, Prof. Delvyn Case (Wheaton College Massachusetts), Dr Edward Clarke (English Faculty), Dr Ariel Kahn (Woolf Institute) and Zimbabwean mbira virtuoso John Pfumojena, and , interspersed with critical discussion. This event is being co-curated by Deus Ex Musica.
For more information, follow the link
Friday 6 November, 2pm – 4pm
The Art of Gwen John
Clare Broome Saunders, Blackfriars Hall, and Lucy Wood (Regent’s Park), with a visit to the Gwen John prints in the Ashmolean (sign up only, details to announced shortly).
For more information, follow the link
Friday 27 November, 2pm – 3.30pm
Poetry performances as memorial services within a Japanese Buddhist context
Pia Joliffe, Blackfriars Hall.
For more information, follow the link
Hilary Term
29 January
Beings of Light: Art, AI and Angelic Presence
Gareth Polmeer (Royal College of Art, London/Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge).
 12 February
At the Margins of the Text: Readers, Books, and Their Afterlives
Julia Drevsina (Blackfriars Hall)
Drawing on manuscripts and rare books from Bede and William of Malmesbury to Gower and C. S. Lewis, this seminar explores what books can tell us beyond the texts they contain. Marginal annotations, alterations, bindings, doodles, illustrations, and other traces of use reveal the changing lives of books and the readers who encountered and reshaped them across the centuries.
26 February
All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
Paul Edmonson (Shakespeare Institute) and Michael Scott (Blackfriars Hall).
Trinity Term
30 April
Regina Caeli
The Marian antiphon Regina Caeli origins, composition, different settings and community contexts.
21 May
Sarah Maple, title tbc.
Summer conference: 5 June 2027
Theology, Art and Nature
With the Angelicum and the Las Casas Institute at Blackfriars.
Past Papers
Published past conference papers are accessible via New Blackfriars.