Prof Wayne Morris
Associate Dean: Postgraduate Research Studies and Professor of Contextual Theology
As a practical theologian, I seek to contribute to shaping new thinking and practice on questions of justice, equality and human rights, and human well-being. I engage these questions with a range of religious and theological perspectives, conscious that religious ideas can lead to extraordinary acts of goodness as well as some of the most horrific acts of history.
I joined the University of Chester in September 2003. I was appointed senior lecturer in 2007, Deputy Head of Theology and Religious Studies in 2010, Head of Department in August 2014, and Director of the School of Humanities in 2017. I very much enjoy combining working with students at all levels of study and sharing in the management of our excellent School. Prior to coming to Chester I held various teaching roles at Birmingham University and I worked for two charities: Sense for deafblind people, and a small ecumenical charity promoting disability rights. In January 2014, I was appointed editor for the journal, Practical Theology.
Undergraduate
- Global Perspectives on Christianity
- Contextual and Practical Theology
Postgraduate
- Themes and Methods in Practical and Contextual Theology
- Religion and Disability
- Publishable Article (Practical Theology Professional Doctorate)
Research interests
- Disability and Equality
- The Deaf Community and British Sign Language
- Minority Indigenous Language Groups
- Non-Literate Communities
- Inter-Faith Dialogue
PhD (and D Prof) supervision
I welcome enquiries for research at doctoral level in any of my research areas listed above.
External Funding
- 2012 Church Colleges and Universities Fund, knowledge transfer funding to develop work in Religious Literacy and Church Schools’ Studies with public and private sectors - £21,000
- 2011 Bible Society Funding for Symposium: ‘World Beyond Words’ - £1,000 (Joint Project with Dr Louise Lawrence, University of Exeter)
- Date Philosophy and Religious Studies Subject Centre funding for a project on developing an undergraduate programme in theology through the medium of British Sign Language - £6,000
- 1999 University of Birmingham PhD funding for project, Theology without Words - £2,610
- 1999 St Luke’s College Foundation PhD funding for project, Theology without Words - £4,000
Elsewhere on the web
Books
Wayne Morris (ed.), Acedia and the Transformation of Spiritual Malaise: Essays in Honour of Martin McAlinden (Chester: University of Chester Press, 2019).
Salvation as Praxis: A Practical Theology of Salvation for a Multi-Faith World (London: T&T Clark, 2014).
Hannah Bacon and Wayne Morris with Steve Knowles (eds), Transforming Exclusion: Engaging Faith Perspectives. (London: T&T Clark, 2011).
Theology without Words: Theology in the Deaf Community (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
Roy McCloughry and Wayne Morris, Making a World of Difference: Christian Reflections on Disability (London: SPCK, 2002).
Journal articles
The Embodied Deaf God: A God Just Like Us’, Practical Theology, (Accepted for Publication, volume 12, 2019).
‘Towards a Liberation Theology of Indigenous Minority Language Groups: A Case Study on the Welsh Language’, Practical Theology, 9.1 (2016): 58-70.
‘No Salvation without the Church: Interfaith Praxes in the Company of Pope Francis’, Practical Theology, 7.4 (2014): 294-304.
‘Transforming Able-Bodied Normativity: The Wounded Christ and Human Vulnerability’. Irish Theological Quarterly 78.2 (2013): 231-243.
Edited chapters
‘Individualism or Interdependence? In search of more complex models of society from disability perspectives’. In Wood, B. J. (ed.), Renewing the Self: Contemporary Religious Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2017) pp.162-178.
Transforming Tyrannies: Disability and Christian Theologies of Salvation’. In Bacon, H. and Morris, W. with Knowles, S. (eds), Transforming Exclusion: Engaging Faith Perspectives (London: T&T Clark, 2011), pp. 121-134.
Other Select Publications
‘John M Hull’ In Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Volume 12) (2016).
‘Towards a Liberation Theology of Indigenous Minority Language Groups: A Case Study on the Welsh Language’. Practical Theology, 9.1 (2016).
‘Christian Salvations in a Multi-Faith World: Challenging the Cult of Normalcy’ In Hannah Bacon, Wendy Dossett and Steve Knowles (eds), Alternative Salvations: Engaging the Sacred and the Secular (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) pp. 121-131.
‘No Salvation without the Church: Interfaith Praxes in the Company of Pope Francis’. Practical Theology 7.4 (2014) pp. 294-304.
‘Transforming Able-Bodied Normativity: The Wounded Christ and Human Vulnerability’. Irish Theological Quarterly 78.2 (2013) pp. 231-243.
‘Response to David Clough’ In Bacon, H. and Morris, W. with Knowles, S. (eds), Transforming Exclusion: Engaging Faith Perspectives (London: T&T Clark, 2011) pp.94-98.
‘Church as Sign and Alternative: Disabled People in the Churches’. Journal of Religion, Disability & Health, 14.1 (2010) pp.47-59.
- BA (Hons) (Birmingham)
- PhD (Birmingham)
- PGCertHE (Liverpool)
- FHEA