Professor Esra Özyürek – Academic Director

Esra Özyürek joined the University of Cambridge after having taught at the London School of Economics and University of California, San Diego. Esra's research explores the tension between the universalism and particularism of globally appealing religious and post-religious belief and value systems. She has published widely, including Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe (2015), Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (2006) and 'Muslim Minorities as Germany’s Past Future: Islam Critics, Holocaust Memory, and Immigrant Integration' (2019).

Dr Giles Waller – Research Associate           

Giles Waller joined the team in 2014. Formerly assisting CIP’s former Director Professor David Ford, he remains Sultan Qaboos Research Associate, with a percentage of his time dedicated to CIP. From 2019 to 2021, he was seconded as Teaching Associate in Christian Theology in the Faculty of Divinity. Giles read Theology and Religious Studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he also completed an MPhil. His doctoral research, also at Peterhouse, focused on the borderlands of Christian doctrine, literature, and philosophy, looking at the theological reception of Greek tragedy, with a particular comparative interest in Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. In 2011, along with Kevin Taylor, Giles edited a collection that brought together theologians and literary scholars, Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature and Tragic Theory (Ashgate), to which he contributed an essay on the role of tragedy in the work of Donald MacKinnon.

Dr Iona Hine – Communications and Programme Manager

Iona Hine returned to the Divinity Faculty in 2021, having completed an undergraduate Theology degree twenty years earlier. Outside academia, Iona has worked for the Church of England (as Mail Order & Web Manager of Church House Bookshop) and in secondary education (PGCE Religious Studies, Roehampton 2007). Iona's PhD, a study of early modern bible translation focused on the book of Ruth, was undertaken at the University of Sheffield, UK in 2014. A related article, 'Modelled on Zurich: a fresh study of Miles Coverdale's 1535 bible', won the 2021 Fredson Bowers Memorial Prize for outstanding textual scholarship. At Sheffield, Iona has worked as a research associate in Digital Humanities, most recently producing a free open access digital edition of H.W. Cassirer's collected works (cassirer.org, 2021). Iona has a track record of supporting impactful research and a specialism in public engagement, inputting to REF case studies in 2014 and 2021. Contributions to teaching in History and English at Sheffield led to Iona's recognition as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Iona also has an MA in Jewish-Christian Relations (CJCR/APU, 2003).

Dr Anastasia Badder – Research Associate

Anastasia Badder joined the Faculty of Divinity in July 2022, as a Research Associate affiliated with Cambridge Interfaith Programme. She recently completed a postdoctoral post at the University of Luxembourg.  Her work ethnographically explores contemporary Jewish lives and languages in Europe.  Some of her recent research investigates the intersections of multilingual literacies, religion, and modernity through the lens of a Talmud Torah school in Luxembourg.  She holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, an MA in Anthropology from the University of Auckland, and a PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Luxembourg. 

Management Committee

In addition to ex officio members (including the Chair of the Faculty Board from the Faculty of Divinity and the Head of the School of Arts and Humanities), the following persons are presently serving on our Management Committee:

Dr Timothy Winter – Chair of Management Committee (2022 – 2023)

Timothy J, Winter is Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity and the current Chair of the CIP Management Committee. He has been connected with the Cambridge Interfaith Programme since its inception, having first come to Cambridge to read Arabic at Pembroke College. He is also the Founder and Dean of Cambridge Muslim College, and the Chair of the Trustees of Cambridge Central Mosque. His academic expertise embraces Sufism, the development of the Ottoman learned institution, and Muslim-Christian relations.

Dr Daniel Weiss – Member of Management Committee

Daniel H. Weiss is Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies in the Divinity Faculty, having joined the Faculty in 2010, after previously teaching at the University of Virginia and at Oberlin College.  He earned his PhD at the University of Virginia, after having received his Bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Masters of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School.  Dr Weiss's research interests include the study of Judaism, theories and practices of interreligious communication, and philosophy of religion. He served as Chair of the Management Committee for several years and is a highly active contributor to CIP activities. He is on sabbatical in the Michaelmas and Easter terms of the present academic year (October to December 2022, and April to July 2023).

Dr habil. Jörg Haustein – Member of Management Committee

Jörg Haustein is Associate Professor in World Christianities in the Divinity Faculty and Fellow and Director of Studies at Selwyn College. Dr Haustein joined the Faculty in 2019 after teaching Religions in Africa at at the School of Oriental and African Studies (2013–2019), and Religious Studies and Intercultural Theology at the University of Heidelberg (2003–2013). He earned his PhD at Heidelberg with a study of Ethiopian Pentecostalism (2009), and completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg with a study of German colonialism and Islam in East Africa (2020). He is currently leading a research project on Religion as a conflict driver in Ethiopia.

Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe – Member of Management Committee

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe is Associate Professor in Patristics at the Faculty of Divinity, and Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies at Peterhouse. Dr Lunn-Rockliffe read History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford (1995-8), before coming to Cambridge for an MPhil in Political Thought (1999), and a PhD in Late Antique History (2004). She took up a Research Fellowship (2002-4) and then a College Lectureship and Fellowship in History at Peterhouse (2004-6). From 2006-16 she taught Roman History in the Classics Department at King’s College London as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, before returning to Cambridge and Peterhouse in 2016. Her inter-religious studies include a comparative account of late antique demonology published in Jewish Studies Quarterly (2018).

[Page last updated: March 2023.]