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People


Director


Richard Finn OP

Richard Finn OP is a fellow of Blackfriars Hall and a member of the faculties of Theology and Classics. The author of Almsgiving in the Late Roman Empire (Oxford 2006) and Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 2009), he was recently one of two curators of the virtual exhibition, ‘A Pipeline from Heaven: 800 Years of Dominican Books’ (https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/dominicans/), and is currently beginning research on the history of the English Dominicans. As part of this project he will be examining the friars’ role in forming cooperatives on Grenada, and in the development of distributism. He has served as Novice Master for the English Dominicans, and he is also a governor of St Mary’s University, Twickenham. He had been a member of the Las Casas Advisory Board for a number of years before taking on the role of Director of the Institute.

Las Casas Institute

Advisory Board


Simon Gaine OP

Simon Francis Gaine OP  is the Regent (Head of House) of Blackfriars Hall and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion, for which he has taught mediaeval theology, including the theology of Aquinas.  He studied theology at Oxford before joining the Dominican Order, and completed his doctorate in modern Catholic theology and is the author of Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? (2003).  He is currently on the Dominican Provincial Council.

Las Casas Institute

Michael Oborne

Michael Oborne is a Fellow at Blackfriars Hall and was Director of the Las Casas Institute from 2011 - 2013.  Until March 2011 he was the OECD's Director of Multi-Disciplinary Issues, including the supervision of the OECD International Futures Programme and the Global Science Forum. He was Deputy Director of the Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry from 1993 where he was responsible for OECD work on science policy, information technologies, the Global Science Forum and multidisciplinary work on biotechnology. Previously, as Head of the Science and Technology Policy Division he developed the OECD Megascience Forum work and new working groups in technology policy and biotechnology. Between 1986 and 1989, he was a member of the Cabinet of the Secretary-General and helped direct the multidisciplinary project on structural adjustment in the OECD area. From 1980 to 1986, he worked as a senior researcher in the Development Centre, specializing in the Pacific region and China. Prior to coming to OECD, Dr Oborne taught in the United States and held professorships in the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique in Paris (1975- 1979) and the University of Paris IX. He also held, in 1980, the post of Senior Fulbright Professor in the University of Milan. Dr Oborne, who is of American nationality, was educated at the University of California at Berkeley (BA, Ma, PhD), Cambridge University (Ford Foundation Fellow), the University of Paris Sorbonne, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (DEA), and the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Las Casas Institute

Timothy Radcliffe OP

Ordained in 1971, Fr Timothy is a well-known preacher and speaker, and author of  several books including  What is the point of being a Christian?  He served as Master of the Dominican Order from 1992 until 2001 and is now resident at the Dominican Priory at Blackfriars, Oxford.  Fr Timothy was Director of the Las Casas Institute from Easter 2014-Easter 2016; and he is an Honorary Doctor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and the Consulter for the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace.

Las Casas Institute

John Battle

John Battle is a Fellow of Blackfriars Hall and was a member of parliament. From 1999-2001 he was Minister of State at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and from 1997 to 1999 Minister for Science, Energy and Technology. From 2001 to 2007 he was the UK Prime Minister's Envoy to the Faith Communities. Battle has published in New Blackfriars, Political Theology and other journals and is a regular contributor to a range of periodicals and newspapers. Recent lectures include to the OECD, at the European Commission and at Oxford University. Before entering parliament Battle was a leading anti-poverty campaigner and Director of Church Action on Poverty. He is currently chair of Leeds Diocesan Justice and Peace Commission and chair of newly formed "Leeds Citizens" and active in the local community anti poverty campaigns in Leeds.

Las Casas Institute

Fernando Cervantes

Fernando Cervantes is a lay Dominican historian of early modern Europe specialising in the intellectual and religious history of early modern Spain and Spanish America. Between 2005 and 2008 he was principal investigator of a major Leverhulme Research Project entitled The Celestial and the Fallen: Angels and Demons in the Hispanic World. With Dr Andrew Redden of Queen's University, Belfast, he is currently completing work on the two major outputs of the project: a co-authored monograph and a co-edited collection of essays entitled Angels, Demons and the New World, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Longer term projects include a study of the literary imagination of early modern Europe that seeks to place the works of Montaigne, Cervantes and Shakespeare in the wider context of early modern humanism, the relations between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and the epistemological crisis of the early seventeenth century. Dr Cervantes was the John Coffin Memorial Lecturer in the History of Ideas at the University of London in 2005 and has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA, and the Liguria Study Centre for the Arts and the Humanities, Bogliasco, Italy. In the Spring quarter of 2009 he held the Tipton Distinguished Visiting Chair at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Las Casas Institute

Bishop William Kenny CP

Bishop William Kenney CP is auxilliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Birmingham and was formerly General Secretary of the Scandinavian Bishops' Conference, and a current member of the Conference of Catholic Bishops' for Europe. A co-founder of the Gothenburg Process on Small Arms he was also formerly a President of Caritas Europa and is a current member of both the Holy Land Co-ordination and the legal commission of Caritas International. Bishop Kenney has taught in universities in Sweden and lectures widely. He is member of the Advisory Committee of the Las Casas Institute.

Las Casas Institute

Tim Sheehy

Tim Sheehy is an independent governance consultant focusing on democratisation, including the functioning of electoral management bodies. He is currently convener of the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Junior Election Professionals (JEP) initiative. Mr. Sheehy has been involved in running various regional organisations (including SADCC). In the early 1990’s he established and managed European Commission's coordination offices for the EU Programme for the Victims of Apartheid, successively in Namibia and then in South Africa.  Following that, set up a Secretariat on behalf of the EU in Amman, Jordan, to support regional economic cooperation with the context of the Middle East Peace Process. In recent years, he has undertaken many assignments for the Commonwealth Secretariat, DFID, the UN, and the EU. Tim Sheehy, who has been an adviser to the EU on Zimbabwe for a number of years, is a Principal at The Policy Practice.

Las Casas Institute

Carmody Grey

Carmody Grey has degrees in theology from Trinity College Oxford, King's College Cambridge and the University of Nottingham. She is currently completing doctoral studies in theology at the University of Bristol, focusing on a theological account of life and nature. Before starting her doctorate she was Head of Philosophy, Religion and Ethics at Bedales School in Hampshire, as well as pursuing her ongoing interest in ecology and the life sciences through a postgraduate degree from Edinburgh. She is involved in theological formation of priests, deacons and catechists in the Diocese of Clifton, and is a columnist for The Tablet.

Las Casas Institute

Ian Linden

Ian Linden is on the board of Las Casas and a Visiting Professor at St. Marys University, Strawberry Hill and he  is presently working on the psychology of the extremist mind.  He was formerly CEO of the Catholic Institute for International Relations and a member of the Christian-Muslim Forum, and was awarded a CMG in 2000 for his work for human rights. He has lived and worked in Africa and, as an academic has focused as an historian on religion and conflict, particularly in Africa.  He is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren.


His personal website and blog can be found at https://www.ianlinden.com/




Las Casas Institute

David Harper

David Harper is Bursar of Blackfriars Hall. Before joining Blackfriars he was the Bursar at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Prior to that he was the Finance and HR manager for the University of Oxford’s Department of Paediatrics. He is also an accredited Local Preacher in the Methodist Church.

Las Casas Institute

Research Leaders


Prof. John Loughlin

Professor John Loughlin was appointed a Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall and member of the Las Casas Institute in October 2015. He is currently working on a project exploring the concept of 'human dignity' from different disciplinary perspectives and is organising a series of public seminars on this theme to be held at the LCI during the academic year 2016-17.

He is an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he directed the Von Hügel Institute until his retirement there in September 2015. He was also a Senior Fellow of the Department of Politics and International Studies of the University of Cambridge. He is Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University where he held the Chair of Politics (1994-2010). He is a Fellow of the UK's Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS), a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHistS), of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA – until 2015) and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2014 he was appointed a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Las Casas Institute

Pia Jolliffe

Pia Maria Jolliffe holds a DPhil in International Development from Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, a DESS in Asian Studies from the University of Geneva and a Master’s in Japanese Studies from the University of Vienna. She was appointed a Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall and member of the Las Casas Institute in February 2016. Pia is also a Research and Teaching Associate at The Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, University of Oxford.

 

 

 

Las Casas Institute

Peter Rona

Peter Róna was born in Hungary, moved to America in 1956, and obtained an Honours degree from the University of Pennsylvania before further studies with a First Class Honours degree at University College, Oxford. After a distinguished career in America, where he became the President of Schroders, he returned to Hungary and served as the CEO of the First Hungary Fund, from which he retired in 2003. Between 2003 and 2010 he taught at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. In 2010 he was appointed to the Supervisory Board of the Central Bank of Hungary. He is the editor (with co-editor Prof L Zsolnai) of the Virtues and Economics series published by Springer. He specialises in the philosophical foundations of the social sciences with particular regard to economics.

Las Casas Institute

Associate Members


Thana de Campos

Dr Thana de Campos is an assistant professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (Common Law Section). She is a research associate at the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights (Rome), the Von Hügel Institute (University of Cambridge/UK) and at Law Casas Institute (University of Oxford/UK). She holds a doctorate in law (jurisprudence) from the University of Oxford, and a master in international law from the University of Sao Paulo/Brazil. Her most recent book entitled The Global Health Crisis: Ethical Responsibilities was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press.  

Dr de Campos researches and publishes in global bioethics, international human rights, legal theory, and moral philosophy, with particular interests in Natural Law, Virtue Ethics, global health law, global health governance, and the human right to health.

Dr de Campos has complemented her scholarship with a commitment to public service. She is the co-founder of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) in Brazil, together with the Brazilian Ministry of Public Affairs. Her motivation in founding ASAP was to equip policy and lawmakers with the philosophical tools necessary to discern what is reasonable and unreasonable in certain laws, particularly health laws.

Las Casas Institute

Staff


Kinga Rona-Gabnai

Kinga Rona-Gabnai is Events and Communications Officer at the Las Casas Institute. She holds a BSc in Business Studies from City, University London.

Las Casas Institute