Thursday 13 November 2025

• Jacob Haasnoot, a doctoral student at the Centre for Contextual Biblical Interpretation at Vrije University Amsterdam, spoke on his research into how ordinary readers in South Sudan interpret the Bible.
• Zoe Strong, doctoral student at the University of Aberdeen, told us about her research on dyslexia and Bible reading.
• Sthembiso Zwane, Director of the Ujamaa Centre, linked to the University of Kwazulu-Natal, shared about their work with working class communities who read the Bible from the perspective of marginalization and exclusion.

Thursday 26 June 2025

• Melody Briggs of Lindisfarne College of Theology – gave an overview of her ongoing research project on how children’s workers in churches handle scripture.
• Andrew Village of York St. John Uni – talked about his research on factors associated with biblical conservatism.

Thursday 27 March 2025

All speakers commented on the challenges of Bible user research and who it benefitted. This has been a regular feature of our conversations since.

• Peter Ben-Smit, co-director of the Centre for Contextual Biblical Interpretation at VU – gave an overview of the Centre’s research.
• Rob Heimburger of Cardiff Uni – spoke about his research on how Bible readers in Columbia read Mt 18:21-35 as conflict survivors.
• Anna Hutchinson of St Mellitus College – talked about her recent book The Influence of the Doctrine of Scripture.

Thursday 21 November 2024

Our theme was “exploring the complexity of Bible user contexts”. Our speakers were:

• Richard Powney of Bible Society – the largest Bible survey ever (probably)
• James Bielo from Northwestern Uni – second hand sacred and the material culture of the Bible
• Louise Lawrence from Exeter Uni – on her recent co-edited volume, Challenging Contextuality
  

Thursday 6 June 2024

Eleven of us met to share our Bible user research interests and plan how the network would work.