February 21, 2023 • Professor Morwenna Ludlow

Forty-six delegates from over a dozen countries attended our Colloquium from September 6th-9th 2022 at Exeter University. The funds awarded by PSFT allowed us to provide 11 bursaries for graduate students at prestigious international universities in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, North American and the UK. Two of these students participated in the graduate student workshops, where they present an aspect of their PhD work, for comment by senior colleagues—this was a very successful part of the conference and the students were warmly praised for their work by the conference delegates. One more presented a paper in the sessions on the conference theme.

Most of the delegates presented research papers on the theme of Gregory of Nyssa’s De anima et resurrectione (On the soul and the resurrection), a classic in early Christian spirituality in which Gregory recreates a dialogue with his sister Macrina. He echoes Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, but argues for the superiority of Christianity because of the doctrine of the resurrection (which Gregory more controversially argues is the means of salvation to absolutely all people). The delegates are currently revising their papers and we will run a peer review process to select the best for publication.

Besides the academic content we were able to visit Exeter Cathedral for a tour followed by evening prayer. The delegates very much enjoyed the campus and the city and we had hugely positive feedback to the colloquium as a whole. Warm thanks to the Trustees for their support!