The Faculty of Theology and Religion is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Bethany Sollereder as Associate Professor in Science and Religion. Dr Sollereder will also join Harris Manchester College as the Wills Fellow and Tutor in Theology and Religion, a post generously endowed by the Wills Trust.
Dr Sollereder is currently Lecturer in Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh. Her research specialises in theological engagement with evolution and suffering, and her most recent work addresses theological responses to ecological decline and the question of human vocation within this context. Among her publications are God, Evolution and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall (2018), Why is There Suffering? Pick Your Own Theological Adventure (2021), and the co-edited volume Progress in Theology: Does the Queen of the Sciences Advance? (2024).
Reflecting on her appointment, Dr Sollereder commented:
I am thrilled to be returning to Oxford, where I pursued post-doctoral work prior to Edinburgh, and am honoured now to join the HMC community as a Fellow. I have spent many happy hours in the Harris Manchester archives and teaching graduate seminars in the Charles Wellbeloved room, and look forward to being part of the College.
Professor Mark Harris, the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion reflected:
Dr Sollereder is a perfect fit to our brand new post of Assistant Professor in Science and Religion. Not only is she a leading international researcher in the field, known especially for her work on the problem of evolutionary suffering, but she is also highly committed to teaching the subject in novel and effective ways. I am so excited that we have gained her expertise, and I look forward to working alongside her both in the College and Faculty.
HMC Principal Jane Shaw said of Dr Sollereder’s appointment:
We are delighted to welcome Dr Sollereder to HMC as the Wills Fellow In Theology and Religion. The focus of her research, in science and religion, has a long and distinguished history at the college, from the eighteenth century when the pioneering chemist Joseph Priestley was a tutor, to the 1960s when the zoologist Alister Hardy founded his research centre on religious experience at the college, to the 1990s when the Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion was established.
