Professor Louise Lawrence

I completed my BA, MA, and PhD at Exeter before moving to Scotland for six years as Teaching Fellow in New Testament Studies at the University of St Andrews (2000-2003) and then Lecturer in New Testament Studies at the University of Glasgow (2003-2006). I returned to Exeter as Lecturer in New Testament Studies in 2006, then was made Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies in 2011, Associate Professor in New Testament Studies in 2018, and in 2020 Professor in New Testament Interpretation. My major research interests are anthropological approaches to, and cultural and contextual implications of, the interpretation of biblical texts. Latterly this has been particularly focussed on embodiment and disability.

My PhD thesis was published as An Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002). My second book, explicitly brought cultural anthropology into dialogue with biblical texts. See Reading with Anthropology: Exhibiting Aspects of New Testament Religion, Paternoster, 2005. See also my co-edited volume with M. Aguilar, Anthropology and Biblical Studies: Avenues of Approach, Deo 2004.

After my return to Exeter, I undertook a three year research project (2006-2009), sponsored by the South West Ministry Training Course (http://www.swmtc.org.uk) entitled ‘Texts of Land, Sea and Hope’. This project initiated a number of community readings of the bible across the region in a wide diversity of contexts (rural; urban; coastal) and amongst a variety of people (intentional communities; artists, D/deaf groups etc.) Results of this project were published in my third monograph entitled: The Word in Place: Reading the New Testament in Contemporary Contexts (SPCK 2009).In 2009-2013 I undertook a British Academy funded project exploring sensory-disability in New Testament texts and interpretation.

This culminated in my fourth monograph: Sense and Stigma in the Gospels: Depictions of Sensory-Disabled Characters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). My fifth monograph entitled, Bible and Bedlam: 'Madness' ,Sanism, and New Testament Interpretation (T&T Clark/Bloomsbury 2018) was released in August 2018. I also write in the field of Critical University Studies. See  Refiguring Universities in an Age of Neoliberalism: Creating Compassionate Campuses (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). I am also co-editor of Challenging Contextuality: Bibles and Biblical Scholarship in Context | Oxford Academic (oup.com) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)