As Departmental Lecturer in Science and Religion, Shaun teaches students in this subject area at all levels including undergraduates and postgraduates, and he supervises doctoral students. He wrote his own doctorate in Oxford on the unification of the laws of physics, which was examined by particle physicist Sir John Polkinghorne. Most of Shaun’s research and writing has been on topics at the intersections of physics (or the sciences generally) with philosophy and religion, which has expanded in recent years to include a social scientific focus. On the current Quantum Worldviews project (2026-2029) he is looking at social scientific aspects of worldviews relating to realist interpretations of quantum mechanics. He is also writing a systematic theology of realist quantum interpretations.
Science and religion; philosophy of physics; philosophical theology; Christian doctrine; Christian monastic spirituality; philosophy of religion, Anglicanism and Catholicism.
Henson, Shaun C. and Michael J. Lakey, eds., Academic Vocation in the Church and Academy Today: ‘And With All Of Your Mind’ (Routledge: New York and London, 2016)
Henson, Shaun C. God and Natural Order: Physics, Philosophy, and Theology. Routledge Studies in Religion Series (Routledge: New York and London, 2014)
Book Chapters, Essays, Articles
Henson, Shaun C., review of Peter Harrison, Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (Cambridge University Press, 2024), New Blackfriars 2026 (forthcoming).
Henson, Shaun C., ‘What Makes a Quantum Physics Belief Believable? Many-Worlds Among Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,’ Zygon 58.1 (for ‘Quantum Theology Beyond Copenhagen’ with M. Harris, E. Crull, R.J. Russell, E. Qureshi-Hurst, E. Simmons), March 2023
Henson, Shaun C. with Stefan Dascalu, Patrik G. Flammer, Mahan Ghafari, Roger Nascimento, and Michael B. Bonsall. ‘Engaging religious institutions and faith-based communities in public health initiatives: A case study of the Romanian Orthodox Church during the COVID-19 pandemic,’ in Frontiers in Public Health, December 2021
Henson, Shaun C. ‘Throwing Dice? Thoughts of God in a Quantum World’, in Abraham’s Dice: Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions, ed. Karl Giberson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Henson, Shaun C. ‘Is Someone Killing the Great Academic Priests of the Western World?’, in Shaun C. Henson and Michael J. Lakey, eds., Academic Vocation in the Church and Academy Today: ‘And With All Of Your Mind’ (Routledge: New York and London, 2016), 9-30
Henson, Shaun C., Review of Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine, by Keith Ward (for Theology 119.6 Nov/Dec 2016)
Henson, Shaun C., Review of The Universe as Communion: Towards a Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Theology and Science, by Alexei Nesteruk (Continuum/T&T Clark, January 2012) for The Christian Scholars’ Review, 42.2 (2013).
