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Research and Teaching
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In the study of religion my work falls under the three interrelated areas of philosophy, aesthetics and nature. My research examines how changes in metaphysics have influenced how human beings understand and interact with nature, how Platonic realism has shaped Western thought in both orthodox and heterodox ways, and how aesthetics has formed a language for expressing spirituality both inside and outside of traditions. I work with materials from antiquity to the present, with most of my publications focused upon the modern age, and particularly Romanticism. Details concerning my current research may be found under projects.
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I teach courses on the philosophy of religion, spirituality and nature, sacred and secular understandings of nature, and mysticism and literature. In these courses my students and I examine how meaning is made through philosophy, how spiritual affect is expressed in aesthetics, and how both are shaped in religion.
Areas ​of Research and Publication
Philosophy of religion: I focus upon the complex and creative relationship between Christianity and Platonism. This is explored in my most recent book, The Metaphysics of Divine Participation (Cambridge, 2025). It is also the subject of Christian Platonism: A History (Cambridge, 2021). I am the series editor for Cambridge Elements in the History of Philosophy and Theology, and the general editor for the five-volume History of Platonism in the Modern Age.
Religion and aesthetics: I concentrate upon the interaction between poetics, metaphysics and spirituality. This is the subject of my work on nature writing, mystical poetics, and Romanticism, Much of my work in this area examines the German Sattelzeit, the tempestuous and fecund period of transition from the early modern to the modern period. This research is published in numerous articles and the book Romanticism and the Re-Invention of Modern Religion (Cambridge, 2019).
Religion and the environment: Encompassing both philosophy and aesthetics, my current work examines the entanglements between religion, nature and culture, as explored in the Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (Cambridge, 2023) and Pandemic, Ecology and Theology (Routledge, 2020). This is the focus of my current project on Participation in Nature.
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Background
I received my PhD from the Divinity Faculty at Cambridge University in 2015, and then taught for two years at Barrett Honours College (Arizona State University), before moving to the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto in 2017. Previously I earned an MPhil from Oxford in Philosophical Theology, an MA in Religious Studies from Stanford, and a BA in Literary Studies and Philosophy from the University of Toronto. I enjoy nature and nature photography, and some of my photos are found on this website.
