Wycliffe Hall is delighted to announce the appointment of Andrew J. Newell as Junior Research Fellow (JRF) in Literature and Theology. Andrew arrived at Wycliffe Hall in 2016 to read for an MSt, and is now in the final stages of his doctoral research with the English Faculty at the University of Oxford. His thesis will be the first comprehensive study of the hymns of the English poet and man of letters, William Cowper (1731-1800). In 2019, Andrew was appointed as the first ‘Wycliffe Hall Inkling Scholar for Literature and Theology’. His JRF will commence in September 2021, when he will join Wycliffe Hall as a member of our research staff team and take up membership at the English Faculty.
Though his doctoral research is centred on the eighteenth century, Andrew’s research and teaching interests in the area of literature and theology are broad, and he has both published essays and delivered lectures at Wycliffe Hall and elsewhere on authors and topics as diverse as T. S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Charles Wesley, Elizabeth Bowen, Frederick Buechner, and museology.
Having broken fresh ground as the first English student at Wycliffe Hall, Andrew will now be the Hall’s first Junior Research Fellow and its first academic member of staff on the English Faculty. Regarding the appointment, the Principal, Revd Dr Michael Lloyd, said:
In this the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, in particular, it seems particularly appropriate that Wycliffe has been able to make an appointment in Theology and Literature. Christian writers such as Dante have shared how the world looks through a Christian lens – answer: bigger - and have helped shape the cultures of which they are a part. And all good writers exegete the world wideningly, deepeningly and enrichingly. Andrew is superb at shedding light on the great literary shedders of light. I am delighted at this appointment, and look forward with great excitement to all that he will contribute to this exegetical community, and all the fresh ways in which he will help us parse ‘the love that moves the sun and all the stars above’.
