Wednesday 26 November 2025 5:30pm to 6:30pm
Online (via Zoom)
About
In Decoding the Cosmos, Dr Emily Qureshi-Hurst takes five of Christianity's most important ideas--creation, design, providence, incarnation, and salvation--and examines them in light of cutting-edge physics.
Compiling a decade of research into an accessible and engaging format, Qureshi-Hurst takes readers on a journey through Big Bang Cosmology, Quantum Mechanics, Special and General Relativity, Chaos Theory, Astrobiology, and more. As a result, Decoding the Cosmos offers a deep dive into one of theology's most lively and fascinating areas: science and religion. Can Christian theology thrive in the modern scientific world?
This online book launch is co-hosted with the Oxford Interfaith Forum and will include responses from Professor Mark Harris and Allan Furic.
About the author
Dr Qureshi-Hurst is a philosopher of religion and science. She is currently Teaching Associate in Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge (Faculty of Divinity) and a Research Associate at Fitzwilliam College. She was previously at the University of Oxford (until 2024), where she completed her MSt (2018) and DPhil (2021) in Science and Religion.
Decoding the Cosmos is Qureshi-Hurst’s third book—and the first written with a general audience in mind. Previous publications include God, Salvation, and the Problem of Spacetime (2022) and the ISSR award-winning Salvation in the Block Universe: Time, Tillich, and Transformation (2025).
About the respondents
As a physicist working in a theological environment, Professor Mark Harris describes himself as a theologian of science, interested in the complex ways that the natural sciences and religious beliefs relate to each other.
Active in physics for many years, he is known (with Steve Bramwell of University College London) as the discoverer of 'spin ice', currently a major research area in the physics of magnetism. By the end of 2020, more than 6,000 journal articles had been published on the topic since the original discovery in 1997. A little after this original breakthrough, Harris also discovered theology, and began to broaden his interests.
Harris relocated to Oxford in 2023, where he occupies the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion, and directs the Ian Ramsey Centre.
Allan Furic is a DPhil candidate in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. His research explores the intuitive interconnectedness of reality through convergent perspectives in quantum metaphysics and Buddhist philosophy.
Originally trained as a historian at the Université de Nantes (France), Allan’s work bridges science, philosophy, and spirituality, reflecting his broader interest in holistic and embodied approaches to understanding consciousness and the cosmos.
About this event
Join author Dr Emily Qureshi-Hurst online to learn more about Decoding the Cosmos. Allan Furic and Mark Harris respond. The event will be introduced by the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, and a Q&A session will be chaired by the Oxford Interfaith Forum.
This event is free to attend. Please register (below) for Zoom details.
More about the book
Decoding the Cosmos: God, the universe, and the search for deeper explanation was published on Saturday 1 November and is available to buy from standard retailers,
Order Decoding the Cosmos now from publishers WipfAndStock.com.
About the co-hosts
The Oxford Interfaith Forum is a global intercultural, interdisciplinary, and interreligious organisation with its signature thematic international interfaith reading groups. Its contribution to religious education and world peace has been recognised by the HM King Abdullah II of Jordan Prize for Interfaith Harmony in 2023, and the Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize awarded by Hofstra University in 2024.