Lecture: Dr Michael Burdett - 21 January

Technology, Ethics and Human Transformation: A Christian Perspective

Dr Michael Burdett has until recently been a Research Fellow in Religion, Science and Technology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford having held a research fellowship at the University of Oxford for a number of years. His research interests lie in Philosophical Theology broadly defined and particularly Continental Philosophy of Religion; Systematic Theology with a specialty in the Image of God and Eschatology; Religion and Science with a focus on Science and Technology Studies, Technology, and Evolution; Religion and Culture with interests in Aesthetics and Secularisation. He recently joined the department of Theology and Religious Studies as Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham.

Dr Burdett has covered a lot of ground with his studies and career. He has undergraduate degrees in physics, philosophy, engineering and theology and began his academic life at several universities in the Los Angeles area as a native Californian. He left working in the aerospace and robotics industries in California to pursue further graduate work in theology and philosophy at the University of Oxford under the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, George Pattison. After his studies at Oxford, he then moved to the University of St Andrews for three years as a researcher where he was formed considerably by the late John Webster and his students. He moved back to Oxford for two years holding a permanent research fellowship before taking up his current position in Nottingham in his new role as Assistant Professor of Christian Theology.

He is currently authoring his next book tentatively titled Death and Glory: Humanism, Transhumanism and Christianity and is co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Theological Anthropology. Some of Dr Burdett’s earlier publications include: Eschatology and the Technological Future (Routledge, 2015), Technology and the Rise of Transhumanism: Beyond Genetic Engineering (Grove, 2014) andFinding Ourselves after Darwin: Conversations on the Image of God, Original Sin and the Problem of Evil (2018).

4.15pm, Harriet Monsell House, Cuddesdon

Free to attend, all welcome.