VHI Events

The Annual Von Hügel lecture showcases examples of interdisciplinary thinking anchored in a universal or ‘catholic’ way of looking at the world. Our history of distinguished lecturers include:

• Why Do We Look Up? : An Astronomer’s Reflection on the Universe and the Call to Study It, Br Guy Consolmagno, SJ (2024)
• Music as a Sacred Language: A Catholic Composer’s Perspective, Sir James MacMillan CBE (2023)
• Christians in the Arab World: The Present Situation, Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald (2020)
• Catholicity: Crises and Opportunities, Fr Thomas Rosica (2019)
• Pope Francis’ Revolution of Mercy: Amoris Laetitia as a New Paradigm of Catholicity, Cardinal Blase Cupich (2018)
• The Contributions of Catholicism in the Third Millennium to a Secular University, Cardinal Luis Tagle (2017)
• The Price of Truth: Herbert McCabe on Love, Politics and Death, Professor Denys Turner (2015)
• The Place of Religion in the European Public Square, Professor Joseph Weiler (2014)
• Governing the Church: The Imperative of Collegiality, Professor Mary McAleese (2013)
• VHI SILVER JUBILEE LECTURE | Habit Matters: The Bodily Character of the Virtues, Professor Stanley Hauerwas (2012)
• Religion & Resistance: The Experience of Eastern Europe, Professor Tomas Halik (2005)
• Christian-Muslim Relations: A Vatican Perspective, Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald (2002)
• VHI AND ST EDMUND’S MILLENIUM LECTURE | The Theological Vindication of Equality, Professor Duncan Forrester (2000)
• Beyond Bejing: The Next Step for Women on the Journey to Justice, Joan Chittister, OSB (1996)
• The Shaking of the Foundations – Again! Is There a Future for Christian Theology?, Professor Mary Grey (1994)
• The Value of Monetary Stability in the World Today, Dr Hans Tietmeyer (1993)
• Old Liberalism and Catholic Social Thought, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, OSB (1992)
• Asian Religions and the Liberation of the Poor, Rev. Dr. Aloysius Pieris, SJ (1990)
• The Church of the Poor, Professor Gustavo Gutierrez (1989)
• The Bias of God, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1989)
• A Double Commitment: To Christ and to the City, Archbishop Derek Worlock (1988)
• What Foundation has the Legal System?, Hon. Norman St. Jonh-Stevas (1986)
• Christians and Northern Ireland, His Excellency Noel Dorr (1985)

The Lattey Lecture was endowed in commemoration of the tireless work of Cuthbert Lattey SJ in founding the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain in 1940, the first meeting of which took place at St Edmund’s College, and all his pioneering works of scholarship and dissemination to promote the reading and study of the Bible amongst Catholics. Apart from his 18 books, Lattey is primarily remembered for editing the first Catholic version of the Bible in English direct from the original Hebrew and Greek, known as the Westminster Version, aiming to produce a ‘dignified and accurate’ translation which was readable and accessible to all.

This is a list of Lattey Lectures since the foundation of the Von Hügel Institute in 1987:

• God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible, Prof Candida Moss (2024)
• Apocalypse Forgotten? The Book of Revelation as a Neglected Resource for Catholic Social Teaching, Prof Ian Boxall (2018)
• Scripture, Liberation Theology, and Pope Francis, Fr Dr Nicholas King, SJ, with a response from Professor Christopher Rowland (2016)
• What authority does the Word of God have in the Catholic Church?, Fr Dr Timothy Radcliffe, OP (2013)
• The Human Person in Catholic Social Teaching: Biblical Perspectives, Most Reverend Bernard Longley (2012)
• The Jewish People and Scriptures in the Christian Bible: The 2001 Document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Dom Henry Wansbrough (2002)
• A Land Flowing with Milk, Honey and People, Rev Dr Michael Prior, CM (1997)
• The Laws of Deuteronomy: A Utopian Project for a World without any Poor, Professor Norbert Lohfink, SJ (1995)
• That we Remember the Poor: Biblical Interpretation, the Church and the Poor, Professor Christopher Rowlands (1993)
• Prophet-Mystics and Social Justice, Rev Carroll Stuhlmueller CP (1991)
• The Complexities of the Gospel Narrative of Jesus’ Passion, Rev Professor Raymond Brown, SS (1990)
• The Resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the New Testament, Professor Joseph A. Fitzmeyer SJ (1987)

A collaborative workshop jointly organised by the The Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund’s College and The Margaret Beaufort Institute.

Join us on Saturday, 1st February 2025 from 1–4pm in The Garden Room, St Edmund’s College as we explore the implications of our call to greater participation in local churches, schools and communities in the light of the multi-year Synod on Synodality, which concluded in October 2024.

In this afternoon workshop, we will begin by reflecting on what happened at the Synod with one of its theologian participants, VHI Senior Research Associate Sr Prof Maria Cimperman RSCJ. We will then build a ‘toolkit’ of synodal best practices and shared wisdom, both in conversation together and informed by a diverse panel of local community members. Our time together will conclude with our own practice of Conversation in the Spirit, using one of the prime vehicles of discernment at the Synod. By the end of our time together, we hope to better recognise what is calling us in our localities and to ask how this might be lived.

Dr Irina Bradley is one of the leading iconographers in the UK. Her works have been exhibited at Buckingham Palace, Fulham Palace, Christ Church Oxford, Dumfries House, and the Saatchi Gallery. His Majesty King Charles has several of Irina’s icons at his Highgrove Chapel, and her icons are featured in churches and private collections worldwide. She currently teaches MA students at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London, where she conducted her doctoral research on ‘Spiritual Striving in Icon Painting’. Her research interests include sacred geometry in iconsand the symbolism of colour in icon painting.

Dr Anna Gannon, FSA: Co-convener and moderator

• Friday, 29th November 2024, 4:45 – 5:30pm; Icon viewing with the Artist; 5:30 – 6:30pm: Lecture, St Edmund’s Garden Room

VHI Affiliate Dr Maria Devlin McNair examines four of Shakespeare’s most celebrated plays—Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Henry IV, The Tempest—in an attempt to consider how the plays’ sea-changes are not so much gripping ‘fictional’ events that happen to characters onstage but as likely challenges we will face ourselves.

Shakespeare explores characters who lose the foundation on which their life is built: the children who lose their father; the prince who loses his kingdom; the soldier who loses his skill; the professional whose projects are taken away. In this series, we examine how some characters succeed at ‘being made new’, and consider what their stories teach us about the building-blocks of identity that persist and support us through upheaval.

Each virtual session includes a lecture with interspersed performance, followed by a half-hour discussion. It is helpful, but not necessary, to read the plays beforehand. Additional resources can be found at ‘Shakespeare for All’.

• Dates and Time: 14 March (GMT); 21 March (GMT); 11 April (BST); 18 April (BST) at 5.30pm.

On 5-8 September 2023 the VHI is hosting the International conference Conflict Resolution and Interreligious Encounter, jointly organised with the Wasatia Graduate School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Europa-Universität Flensburg, and co-sponsored by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research.

The conference is organised by Prof Dr Ralf Wüstenberg, Senior Research Associate at the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry and Professor of Protestant Theology and Director of the Wasatia Graduate School, and Dr Zeina Barakat, Research Associate at the Von Hügel Institute and Academic Coordinator of the Graduate School.

The event will conclude with a public lecture by Professor David F. Ford OBE entitled On Being Healthily Plural: Scriptural Reasoning and Its Analogues, on Thursday, 7 September at 5.30 pm, Garden Room, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

The Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry convened in Rome 20st – 21st March 2023 to launch five-year research initiative, Disability and Knowledge.

Disability is part of being human; yet too often people with disability still experience stigmatisation, discrimination and isolation. This collaboration between the Von Hügel Institute, Lyn’s House Cambridge, the University of Notre Dame Rome Global Gateway, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and L’Arche Italy brought together participants from among the disability community, academia, civic and religious institutions, carers, and artists to explore the nature of knowledge in the context of disability, and to expand understanding of the forms which human knowledge takes.

The project explores expansively the nature of knowledge from the perspective of disability studies and disability experiences, with an ultimate goal to develop new epistemic and narrative resources for shared understanding, encounter, and belonging, and towards a better, more inclusive future. The March 2023 Rome workshop convened an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners with the aim of

1. developing the project’s conceptual framework;
2. raising a series of questions which the framework poses; and
3. creating an interactive space for disability experiences to be heard and reflected upon.

To focus the research conversation, the workshop committee organised reflection on disability and knowledge around the concept of “relationality.”

The panels on the first day of the conference featured a practice-based look at relationality through conservation with people who live and work in disability communities. The first panel, a round table discussion, invited reflection on the theme from participants whose work bridges the worlds of disability communities and University settings. The second panel presented a documentary film about a public bicycling project undertaken by a group of friends with and without disabilities, tackling the question: through a relational approach, with disability at its centre, how might we change the way we think about and within philosophy, politics and theology, as well as the kinds of knowledge, public policies and recommendations produced within them?

Through the production of academic publications, pastoral materials, community engagement and arts initiatives, the project will generate resources for scholars and practitioners for the greater participation and leadership by people with disability in academia, religion and society.

Programme 

Jointly organised by the Notre Dame London Gateway and the Von Hügel Institute

Why have states and foreign ministries across the Middle East invested in interreligious initiatives over the past 15 years? Why have European and International governmental and non-governmental organizations supported them in doing so? What kind of religious or political vision might these initiatives be advancing? And what does this all mean for the prospects of peace and religious and political development in the region?

In this lecture, Michael Driessen draws from his new book, The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2023), to explore the growth of state-sponsored interreligious initiatives in the Middle East and their use as a policy instrument for engaging with religious communities and ideas. Rooted in case studies and fieldwork in Algeria, Lebanon and Qatar, Driessen examines both the geopolitical interests framing dialogue in the region and the new ideas and practices of citizenship, religious pluralism and social solidarity that they seem to bring forward. In doing so, he presents interreligious initiatives in the region as reflecting new modes of religion operating in contemporary global politics and as offering important lessons about the development of alternative models of democracy, citizenship and modernity.

Michael Driessen is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the MA program in International Affairs at John Cabot University. He also directs the Rome Summer Seminars on Religion and Global Politics. Michael received his doctorate from the University of Notre Dame and has been a post-doctoral fellow at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Doha, Qatar as well as a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. He also holds a research affiliation with Cambridge University’s Von Hügel Institute and serves as an advisor for the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon. Driessen’s books include The Global Politics of Interreligious Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2023), Human Fraternity and Inclusive Citizenship: Interreligious Engagement in the Mediterranean (ISPI, 2021; co-edited with Fabio Petito and Fadi Daou), and Religion and Democratization (Oxford University Press, 2014). He has published scholarly articles in Comparative Politics, Sociology of Religion, Politics and Religion, Constellations and Democratization and essays in America Magazine and Commonweal.

• On Monday 16 October 2023, 5.30 pm, Garden Room, St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.

On Monday, 13 March 2023, the Von Hügel Institute for Critical Catholic Inquiry and St Edmund’s College welcomed Professor John T McGreevy, Provost of the University of Notre Dame, to present his latest book, Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis. McGreevy first visited the Von Hügel Institute in 2019, as part of the Institute’s Catholicity: Crises and Opportunities? series, to deliver a lecture on Catholicity and History.

McGreevy’s book presentation, chaired by VHI Director Dr Vittorio Montemaggi, included responses by renowned historian Professor Eamon Duffy FBA and the Master of St Edmund’s College, Catherine Arnold OBE.

Jointly organised by the VHI, St Edmund’s and the University of Notre Dame’s London Global Gateway, the evening convened a mix of Cambridge and Notre Dame academics, students, staff and affiliates.

McGreevy concluded his presentation by articulating opportunities for institutions of Higher Education today:

“[A] mixture of vibrancy and turmoil has consequences for the work we do together at Notre Dame and St Edmund’s…Our shared good fortune means we have an opportunity, maybe responsibility, to confront the challenges we all now face…Catholicism as an institution will be reimagined in the twenty-first century…[and] both St Edmund’s and Notre Dame—maybe the people in this room—will play an important role in that reimagining.”

The first response, offered by Duffy, praised the extensive scholarship and careful balance achieved by McGreevy in his most recent historical survey: “One of the most welcome aspects of Professor McGreevy’s splendidly learned and wide-ranging book,” said Duffy, “is its demonstration…of the complexity and multi-vocal character of Catholicism since the French revolution.”

“[McGreevy’s] extraordinarily wide-ranging survey…has much to say about the histories of Catholicism in North and South America, but also in Africa and Asia, most of it material largely unfamiliar to British readers,” he noted. “Proponents of authoritarian and monolithic accounts of Catholicism routinely appeal to the past, and to tradition, imagined as a seamless homogenous whole, to underpin a vision of Catholicism that flattens difference and projects on to the past… an oppressive uniformity…It’s one of the perennial tasks of the Church historian to complicate and contradict any such exercise in over-simplification…[and] Catholicism: A Global History…admirably fulfils that honourable vocation.”

A second response, offered by Arnold, outlined how St Edmund’s College fits within the larger historical narrative woven by McGreevy and, particularly, how St Edmund’s and Notre Dame are situated within their distinctive histories to answer a unique call to action.

“Our Royal Charter of 1998, which underpins our existence as a College, clearly states that among the College’s objects is: to promote and facilitate contributions from the Catholic Church and from members of the Catholic Church in carrying out our objects as a place of education, learning, religion and research,” said Arnold. “The Catholic instincts of our founders and forebearers, while by necessity often deeply parochial, always lent toward two aspirations. That the purpose and reach of St Edmund’s was as much global as English, and that an aim of St Edmund’s—in the context of those studying within the University—is the formation of those in our care.”

Arnold concluded: “[McGreevy] poses the question: ‘what will the next sixty years bring?’ Defining how Higher Education can help support and achieve this over the remainder of the twenty-first century and beyond is one of the most important questions institutions such as St Edmund’s and Notre Dame can seek to answer.”

Professor Alison Cornish’s (NYU and President of the Dante Society of America) lecture will be based on her new, ground-breaking book, Believing in Dante, which offers a compelling new take on Dante’s Divine Comedy with modern sensibilities in mind, bringing Dante’s poem to meaningful life today.

Addressing the characteristics that distance an author like Dante from the modern world, Professor Cornish will reflect on the value of critically and constructively engaging with texts that do not coincide with current worldviews.

Refreshments will be served. All welcome!

• Monday, 23 May, 2022 – 05:00
  Garden Room, St Edmund’s College

Catholicity, the distinctive mark of the Roman Catholic community throughout the centuries, has been understood in many ways. Most recently it has become a tribal designation of a particular group of Christians over against others, divisive and constraining rather than expansive and inviting.

The VHI will be researching earlier, more traditional, more expansive understandings of catholicity over the coming years and exploring their applications within and without the official church. We will explore a number of constrictions in catholicity (the abuse crises and gender representation in the Church) as well as some of the more expansive ways of thinking about catholicity as a way of setting up our five year research project on this theme.

#CatholicitySeries

• Friday 1 March 2019 | 16:00
  Catholicity: Its Varieties and Futures
  Philip McCosker
• Friday 3 May 2019 | 16:00
  Catholicity and History: Jacques Maritain, the Democratic Crisis
  and the Promise and Perils of a Global Catholic History
  John McGreevy, University of Notre Dame
• Friday 10 May 2019 | 16:00
  The Pros and Cons of Catholicism
  Sir Anthony Kenny
• Wednesday 12 June 2019 | 16:00
  Catholicity and Gender
  Mary McAleese in conversation with Gemma Simmonds CJ
  (jointly organised with the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology)
• Friday 25 October 2019 | 16:00
  Catholicity and Sexual Abuse
  Hans Zollner SJ, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome
• 7 February 2020 | 16:00
  The Annual Von Hügel Lecture
  Christians in the Arab World: The Present Situation
  Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald

[All events are free and held at St Edmund’s College (Garden Room, Library Building) unless otherwise indicated. Videos of past lectures can be found on our YouTube page.]

Most great thinkers, starting with Plato and Aristotle, have thought that the best reflection on reality in all its riotous complexity begins in wonder. Wonder has thus been at the foundation of the whole gamut of disciplinary inquiries, whether in the humanities or sciences, across the centuries.

Have we lost a sense of wonder at the reality in which we exist? Has wonder become routinised, sensationalised? Have we become numb to wonder? How does wonder work, or not work, in various fields of enquiry or cultures? What are the challenges to wonder in today’s world? How might a sense of wonder affect the way we live and act in our world?

This year the VHI seeks to explore and revitalise the forgotten grammars of wonder.

Michaelmas 2017

• Friday 10th November | 16:00
  Economics and Wonder: The Hidden Theology of Economic Life
  Philip Goodchild
• Friday 24th November | 16:00
  Poetry and Wonder: Cataphasis, Redemption and a Mucker Fog
  Hilary Davies

Lent 2018

• Friday 9th February | 16:00
  The Annual Von Hügel Lecture: Pope Francis’ Revolution of Mercy
  Cardinal Blase Cupich
• Friday 23th February | 16:00
  Philosophy and Wonder: The Dearth of Astonishment and Thinking as Negativity
  William Desmond • Catherine Pickstock
• Friday 9th March | 16:00
  Grammars of Creativity
  Robin Attfield

Easter 2018

• Friday 27th April | 16:00
  AI, Digital Dualism and the Loss of Wonder
  Ilia Delio OSF
• Friday 18th May | 16:00
  Love and Wonder: Relationships Between Ideal and Reality
  Aldegonde Brenninkmeijer-Werhahn
• Friday 25th May | 16:00
  The Lattey Lecture
  The Book of Revelation: A Neglected Resource for Catholic Social Teaching?
  Ian Boxall
• Friday 1st June | 16:00
  Innocence and Wonder: Lecture-Recital
  Steven Isserlis CBE and Tom Poster
  [This event will take place in St Edmund’s College Chapel, booking necessary]
  ——

All events are held at St Edmund’s College (Garden Room) unless otherwise indicated. Events are free, open to the public, and followed by drinks.

Please note that during our public events photographs or videos will occasionally be taken: should you not wish to appear in these please contact us. Video of the lectures can be found on our YouTube page.

Throughout our social, political, and cultural lives—online as well as offline—we see increasing oppositional and bitter disagreement.

Have we forgotten the virtues of disagreement in moving towards agreement? Have we forgotten how to disagree civilly? Can we cope with disagreement? How does disagreement work? Are there different kinds?

Inspired by Pope Francis’ promotion of the value and importance of disagreement, we hope to deepen our understanding of disagreement across several domains, highlight its role in any agreement, and explore impediments to healthy disagreement. Learning how to disagree better will be key to our globalised shared future.

Michaelmas 2016

• Thursday 10th November | 17:30
  Wittgenstein and Inter-religious Dis/Agreement
  Gorazd Andrejč • Ed Kessler • Alban McCoy
• Friday 25th November | 16:00
  Migrants and Dis/Agreement: Whose Responsibility? Why Care?
  Carrie Pemberton Ford • Anna Rowlands • Sara Silvestri
  (jointly organised with the Centre for Catholic Social Thought & Practice)
• Friday 2nd December | 16:00
  Catholic Dis/Agreement: Pope Francis and the Uses of Disagreement as a Mechanism of Ecclesial Reform
  Austen Ivereigh • Eamon Duffy

Lent 2017

• Friday 27th January | 16:00
  Law and Dis/Agreement: Creative Contradictions in Public and Private Life
  Philip Allott • Mark Engelman
• Friday 10th February | 16:00
  The Annual Von Hügel Lecture
  The Contributions of Catholicism in the Third Millennium to a Secular University
  Cardinal Luis Tagle
• Friday 24th February | 16:00
  How to Disagree Without Being a Liberal Pluralist
  Terry Eagleton
• Thursday 9th March | 16:00 (in the College Chapel)
  Media and Dis/Agreement
  Julian Baggini • Lorna Donlon • Michael O’Loughlin

Easter 2017

• Thursday 27th April | 17:00
  Future of Faith: The Modern Place of Worship
  Baroness Warsi and others
  (jointly organised with the Woolf Institute and the Warsi Foundation)
• Friday 5th May | 16:00
  Politics and Dis/Agreement
  Lord Hennessy • Judd Birdsall • Adrian Pabst
• Friday 2nd June | 16:00
  Literature and Dis/Agreement: Faith as a Semi-Logical Mode
  Michael D. Hurley

[All events are held at St Edmund’s College (Garden Room) unless otherwise indicated. Events are free, open to the public, and followed by drinks.

Please note that during our public events photographs or videos will occasionally be taken: should you not wish to appear in these please contact us. Video of the lectures can be found on our YouTube page.]

What is mercy? What can it look like in action? How does mercy relate to justice? What are the obstacles to practising mercy today? Is it possible or even legitimate in an age of universal human rights?

Pope Francis has surprised the world by consistently highlighting and promoting mercy since the very first days of his papacy. He argues, following Walter Kasper, that mercy is the pre-eminent attribute of God and should thus be the primary characteristic of humans and their actions. This year’s series of lectures and events seeks to explore the theme of mercy from the perspective of many disciplines, drawing out its possibilities, permutations, and problems.

• Friday 30th October at 16:00 – The Annual Von Hügel Lecture 2015
  The Price of Truth: Herbert McCabe on Love, Politics, and Death
  Denys Turner
• Friday 6th November at 16:00
  Mercy: The Key to Pope Francis’ Reforms
  Austen Ivereigh
• Friday 22nd January at 16:00
  Narratives of Mercy: Dante’s Paradiso and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure
  Robin Kirkpatrick
• Friday 19th February at 16:00
  The Priority of Mercy: Ontology Not Morality
  James Alison
• Friday 26th February at 16:00
  Mind, Brain, and Mercy
  Iain McGilchrist and John Cottingham
• Friday 4th March at 16:00 – The Lattey Lecture 2016
  Scripture, Liberation Theology and Pope Francis
  Nicholas King SJ, response from Christopher Rowland
• Wednesday 20th April at 16:00
  Works of Mercy in Works of Art
  Ben Quash, Maggi Hambling CBE, and James Cahill
• Thursday 2nd June at 16:00
  Mercy and Migration: Panel Discussion
  Rory Fox, Martina Liebsch, Sara Silvestri, and Elif Çetin
• Wednesday 8th June at 16:00 – Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity
  Mercy in the City
  Manuel Castells and Philip Sheldrake
• Friday 10th June at 16:00 – Old Divinity School, St John’s College
  Mercy and Music: Lecture Recital
  Stephen Hough CBE