Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund report  – Nathaniel Hodson (2024, DPhil Theology and Religion)

In May 2025 I was able to travel to Edinburgh for a long weekend due to the generosity of the Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund. The primary event which drew me to Scotland was the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics’s Postgraduate Conference, centering this year on the theme of ‘Conflict and Peacebuilding’.

Participating in the conference was a delight, and I was able to hear impressive and challenging talks from fellow postgraduate students on topics such as the weaponisation of forgiveness, war in Thomas Aquinas and the Middle Ages, and the conceptualisation of borders in the Roman Empire and Acts 17. Of particular note was the keynote address from Oliver O’Donovan, a preeminent theological ethicist writing today, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, and sometime Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology and Canon of Christ Church at Oxford. O’Donovan’s exploration of the origins of the – perhaps apparent – tensions between love and justice provided substantial material for further discussion among the postgraduates at the pub later in the evening.

It was a unique opportunity to enjoy the conference at the University of Edinburgh, a beautiful university with a rich legacy in the field of theology. The conference afforded new friendships and professional connections with postgraduates in my field. It also, however, provided a reunion or two, as a friend from my seminary training – now a PhD student at Durham – was the organiser of the conference.

I am very grateful to Univ and the Old Members’ Trust Graduate Conference and Academic Travel Fund for making the visit possible. It was a welcome change of scenery during the first year of the DPhil as well as a professional, intellectual, and social enrichment.

Published: 20 June 2025

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