Visiting Scholars at MF

Ulla Schmidt teaches practical theology at Aarhus University. Her current research interests include research on the foundation of practical theology as a discipline, especially in terms of practice theory, empirical research in religious practices of contemporary Christian religion in the Nordic countries, and their theological meanings and implications, and research on church organisation and its ecclesiological implications.

Most recently, she has been particularly active in researching practices and rituals pertaining to death, such as funerary and memorialising practices. This is also what she will be focussing on during her research stay at MF in the autumn semester of 2023. In particular, she will be working on funerary practices from the perspective of spatiality, asking what might be learned and understood about funerary practices by viewing them as spatial practices.

Ulla Schmidt obtained her doctoral degree from the Norwegian School of Theology in 1998, and has since then worked in the Research Council of Norway, at KIFO Institute for Church, Religion, and Worldview Research, and since 2014 at the Department of Theology at Aarhus University.

Oddvar Johan Jensen is a professor of theology, active within the fields of systematic theology,  ethics, and church history. Jensen takes a special interest in Martin Luther and Lutheran theology in the 16th Century. His research interests include church history and the history of theology in the broadest sense. 
At present he is working on the history of Norwegian catechisms.

Jeanne Wreden's ongoing research is a critical investigation of pope John Paul II’s ideas of Virgin Mary as a model for modern women. The hypothesis is that this may be the very point of departure for a «Theology of Women» based on the concept of Mariology as the feminine dimension of Christology. In turn this concept may contribute to the admission of women to the Ministerial priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church.

Visitors in recent years

Since 1984, Brita Hardeberg has been a priest and provost in the Church of Norway. She has a her professional degree in theology from MF (1983), and later, among other things, a master's in practical theology at UiO (2012), where she wrote about the history of the work guidance (arbeidsveiledningen - ABV) in the church.

Having been awarded the St. Olav grant she will now carry out further research on ABV, on organisation, distribution and the importance ABV has for employees. The work period is from March 2023 to February 2024.

Dr. S. Sergio Saleem Scatolini has a multidisciplinary academic background in Judeo-Christian theology (Hebrew Bible), Arab and Muslim studies, linguistics, and education (Islamic Religious Education, English language teaching, curriculum analysis, special education, and quality assurance).

He teaches at Rustaq College of Education at the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, Sultanate of Oman & Dept. of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
Among his research interests are:

• Spiritual ecosystems as cooperative, intersectional, and multidimensional existential projects
• Faith-driven Islamic discourses and Islamic religious education in the West, especially de-colonial ones for eco-justice at the start of the Antropocene

At MF Scatolini worked with the research group Critical Islamic Studies.

Siiri Toiviainen Rø, PhD, works on patristics/early Christian studies, with a focus on ethics and anthropology particularly in the fourth century. Toiviainen Rø obtained her PhD in Historical Theology from the University of Durham in January 2018. Her thesis explored the links between pleasure, sin, and the good life in the works of Gregory of Nyssa. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence in Reason and Religious Recognition at the University of Helsinki. Toiviainens Rø’s project while at MF focused on the receptions of anti-Epicurean polemics in early Christian literature.

I am excited about the depth and breadth of early Christian scholarship at MF. During my visit, I am hoping to complete my manuscript on Gregory of Nyssa’s view of pleasure and enjoyment as components of the Christian life. I am also finishing a translation of 1 Clement, which will be a part of the new Finnish translation of the Apostolic Fathers.

Doctoral Student Ted Erho spent six months as a visiting scholar at MF from the 15th of March to the 15th of September 2020. He is working towards a Ph.D. in Theology & Religion at Durham University, UK. In his dissertation thesis Erho examines Antiquarian Prophecy in Babylonia and Israel based on ancient manuscripts. 

In 2019 Karin Rubenson was doctoral student in ecclesiology at Uppsala University. She visited MF as a guest researcher from September to December 2019.

My research focus is the relation between children and lithurgy. My material is predominantly empirical, consisting of interviews with children and adults from different congregations withing the Swedish church. In my analyses I combine empirical findings with theoretical material from the fields of theology, critical childhood studies and comparative children’s literature.