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 Daniel Weiss – Chair of CIP 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.
Dr Giles Waller – Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer
Giles Waller joined the team in 2014. Formerly assisting CIP’s former Director Professor David Ford, he is now Teaching Associate in Christian Theology. 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.