Research & Teaching Fellows

Torrance Kirby is Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Director of the Centre for Research on Religion at McGill University, Montreal. He received a DPhil degree in Modern History from Oxford University in 1988.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a life member of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and McCord Fellow of the Princeton Centre of Theological Inquiry. Recent books include Persuasion and Conversion: Religion, Politics and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (2013), The Zurich Connection and Tudor Political Theology (2007), and Richard Hooker, Reformer and Platonist (2005). He is also the editor of A Companion to Richard Hooker (2008), and co-editor of Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion, 1520-1640 (2014). His most recent book is an edition of selected Sermons at Paul’s Cross, 1521-1642 (Oxford, 2017). Kirby recently received a Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support an inquiry into ‘The Reception of German Mysticism in Early Modern England.’

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, he will be a Research Fellow and will be with the Summer Course for the entire four weeks, continuing his research and discussing it with the Student Fellows.

Jennifer Powell McNutt is Franklin S. Dyrness Associate Professor in Biblical and Theological Studies at Wheaton College.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, she will be a Teaching Fellow and discuss with the Student Fellows the significance of the Bible for the Wittenberg Reformation and the influence of the Wittenberg reading of the Bible on the English Reformation.

Prof. Dr. Alec Ryrie teaches Church History at Durham University. He is a leading expert on English and Scottish church history in the 16th century and global Protestantism in the early modern age.

During the 2024 Wittenberg Summer Course, Prof. Ryrie will introduce the Student Fellows to the history of the Scottish Reformation and its relationship to the English and Continental Reformation, as well as present his research on the global impact of the Reformation in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Prof. Dr. Dorothea Wendebourg teaches Church History at Humboldt University in Berlin. She held the chair for Reformation History in the Theological Faculty from 2002 to 2017.

As part of the 2022, 2023 and 2024 Wittenberg Summer Courses, she presents a couple of her favourite research topics: sixteenth-century sacramental theology, Reformation and music, as well as Luther and the Jews.

Prof. Richard Rex is Professor of Reformation History at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University. At Queen’s College he is Polkinghorne Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies and serves as Director of Studies in Theological and Religious Studies. His research focuses on the religious history of 16th century England and its connections with the continent.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, Prof. Rex meets the Student Fellows in Cambridge on their tour of England and introduces them to his research.

Prof. Dr. Martin Ohst taught Church History and Systematic Theology at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. His research covers medieval and Reformation Christianity and the theology of the 18th and 19th centuries. He is one of the few experts on English church history in Germany.

With the Student Fellows, Prof. Ohst will explore the relationship between King Henry VIII and Martin Luther in the 1520s.

Robert Kolb is professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (Missouri). His research focuses on Martin Luther’s theology and the history of the Reformation and post-Reformation period.
As part of the Wittenberg Summer Courses 2022, 2023 and 2024 he will discuss with the Student Fellows the development and long-term impact of Luther’s theology.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Kaufmann is Professor for Church History at the University of Göttingen. He is Germany’s leading scholar on Reformation history. In 2020 he received Germany’s most prestigious academic award, the Leibniz Prize, awarded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council).

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Courses 2022, 2023 and 2024, Thomas Kaufmann will discuss his research on the Reformation and print and on the Peasant’s War.

Alyssa Lehr Evans is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Chair of Church History at the University of Göttingen. She earned her PhD in the History of Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Evans worked on the Karlstadt Critical Edition (2015-17) on Karlstadt’s letters and writings from 1507-20. Her new project, “The English Luther,” explores sixteenth-century translations of Luther’s works into English.

Prof. Marshall is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His research focuses not only on the English Reformation and the emergence of Roman Catholicism in the sixteenth century, but also on the continental Reformation and its relationship to ecclesiastical change in England.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Courses 2024, Peter Marshall meets with the Student Fellows in Oxford and introduces them to his research.

Dr. Alan Bartlett is Ministry Development Advisor in the Anglican Diocese of Durham, honorary canon of Durham Cathedral, part-time mission priest in a forming mining village and teaches and supervises for Cranmer Hall and the Lindisfarne College of Theology. He has published in the areas of Anglicanism and Spirituality, most recently ‘Vicar’ (London: SPCK, 2019).

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, Dr. Bartlett meets the Student Fellows in Durham on their tour of England and analyzes Cranmer’s ordination liturgy with them.

Paul Avis is Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. He has previously held honorary chairs at Durham University (2017–21), and the University of Exeter (2008–17). Following 23 years in parish ministry and service on the General Synod and the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England, he served as General Secretary of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity, 1998–2011. He has taken part in international theological dialogues for the Anglican Communion and served on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order and its predecessor body (2000-20). Paul was a Chaplain to HM Queen Elizabeth II (2008–17) and consecutively Prebendary, Sub-Dean and Canon Theologian of Exeter Cathedral. He is currently an honorary assistant priest, licensed to the Diocese of Exeter, UK. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Ecclesiology and edits the series Anglican-Episcopal Theology and History (Brill). He edited The Oxford Handbook of Ecclesiology (2018) and jointly The Lambeth Conference: Theology, History, Polity and Purpose (2017). Recent books include In Search of Authority: Anglican Theological Method from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (2014); The Vocation of Anglicanism (2016); Jesus and the Church: The Foundation of the Church in the New Testament and Modern Theology (2020); Reconciling Theology (2022); Theology and the Enlightenment: A Critical Enquiry into Enlightenment Theology and its Reception (2022); and Revelation and the Word of God (2024).

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, Paul Avis presents his views on Richard Hookers contribution to the making of Anglican theology and on the proclamation of the Gospel according to the Reformation tradition.

Prof. Gehring is Associate Professor of Early Modern History in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on early modern Britain in the wider European context, and he is particularly interested in the Elizabethan period and the religious history of the sixteenth century.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2024, Prof. Gehring meets the Student Fellows in Cambridge during their tour of England and introduces them to his research.

Dr. Matthias Deuschle is a lecturer in Church History at the Eberhard Karls University Tübingen and Director of the Albrecht Bengel House, where Protestant pastors and Religious Education teachers for Württemberg are trained. He specializes in the history of the Reformation in Southwest Germany and in nineteenth-century Prussian church history.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Courses 2022-24, Matthias Deuschle presents his research on the Reformation in Southwest Germany.

Christopher Boyd Brown (Ph.D., history, Harvard 2001; M.Div. Concordia St. Louis) is Associate Professor of Church History at Boston University School of Theology and General Editor of the extension of the American Edition of Luther’s Works being published by Concordia Publishing House.

His research interests include Martin Luther’s reception of patristic and medieval sources, the reception of Luther among his students and the laity, and the roles of preaching, music, and the visual arts in the Reformation. He is the author of Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Harvard 2005). His current project is a study of early modern wedding preaching.

In June 2023 he is a Research Fellow at the Wittenberg Center for Reformation Studies. He participates in the 2023 Wittenberg Summer Course on the German Reformation and works in the libraries and archives on his research projects.

Prof. Jonathan Linebaugh is teaches at Beeson Divinity School. He holds the ‘Anglican Chair of Divinity’ and is Director of the ‘Institute of Anglican Studies’.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Courses 2022 and 2023, he will discuss his research on Luther intepretation of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.

Prof. Jennifer Wasmuth is professor for Ecumenical Theology and Eastern Orthodoxy at Göttingen University.

As part of the Wittenberg Summer Course 2023 she will be Teaching Fellow and discuss with the participants the patristic background of the German Reformation.

Thomas Freeman is Lecturer in Early Modern History in the Department of History at the University of Essex, Colchester. He specializes in John Foxe and the English Protestant martyrs of Queen Mary’s reign.

For the 2023 Summer Special Course on Reformation Paleography, he will teach for two days, introducing participants to sixteenth-century English manuscript culture.

Henning Reinhardt is pastor for four villages near Kassel and head of studies for his deanery. His research interests are Luther’s sacramental theology and Reformation attempts of dialogue and understanding. In 2018, his book on the ‘Wittenberg Concord’ of 1536 was awarded the ‘Martin Luther Prize’ (Luthergesellschaft e.V.).
In the 2023 Wittenberg Summer Course he will present his research about the Wittenberg Concord and share his experiences in working with archival material.

Steven Griffin (PhD, Historical Theology, McGill University) teaches theology and church history at Ryle Seminary in Ottawa, Canada, and in the Spanish Program of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Given his particular interest in the theology of Spanish Protestant reformers such as Casiodoro de Reina (c. 1520-1594)  and Antonio del Corro (1527-1591), he uses the opportunity as a 2022 Research Fellow at the Wittenberg Center for Reformation Studies to look further into the special impact of German and Swiss reformers on the confessional theology of their Spanish counterparts.