Staff profile

Prof Anna Rowlands is the holder of the St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice. She is a political theologian who works at the interface of political and social theory and Christian theology. Her original training was in the social and political sciences, followed by postgraduate degrees in theology. She has worked for two decades on the political philosophy of Gillian Rose, with additional interests in Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. These interests coincided with research over the last 15 years in two other areas: the study of forced migration and the ethics of migration, and the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. She has published in all these areas. Her key publications include: Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The T&T Clark Reader in Political Theology, edited with Elizabeth Phillips and Amy Daughton (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Contemporary Migration (forthcoming 2024) edited with Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh. She is currently working on a new book on Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil and Gillian Rose.

• Synodality in Catholic tradition
• Forced Migration, Political Theology, Catholic social thought, Gillian Rose, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt

• 2017: Post-Laudato Si' project: theology, ecology and development(£116000.00 from Stichting Porticus)
• 2016: Local Community Experiences and Responses to Conflict Induced Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey(£74872.09 from AHRC)
• 2015: PhD in the area of Catholic charitable work around homelessness(£45000.00 from The Charles Plater Trust)

Chapter in book

• Rowlands, Anna (Accepted). Beginning in the Middle: the third city and the politics of membership. In Misrecognitions. Davis, Joshua B. Wipf and Stock.
• Rowlands, Anna (2020). Reading Simone Weil in East London: Destitution, decreation and the history of force. In Suffering and the Christian Life. Kilby, Karen & Davies, Rachel T&T Clark. 113-132.
• Rowlands, Anna (2018). Against the Manichees: Immigration Detention and the Shaping of the Theo-political Imagination. In Religion in the European Refugee Crisis. Schmiedel, Ulrich & Smith, Graeme Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 163-187.
• Rowlands, Anna (2018). On the Promise and Limits of Politics: Faith-Based Responses to Asylum-Seeking. In Fortress Britain? Ethical approaches to Immigration. Ryan, Ben London, UK Philadelphia, PA, USA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 68-93.

Edited book

• Phillips, Elizabeth, Rowlands, Anna & Daughton, Amy (2021). T&T Clark Reader in Political Theology. Bloomsbury.

Journal Article

• Rowlands, Anna (2018). Temporality, Dispossession and the Search for the Good: Interpreting the Book of Jeremiah with the Jesuit Refugee Service. Political Theology 19(6): 517-536.