Interim Academic Dean
kevernpm@queens.ac.uk
My career to date has fallen roughly into three parts. As a young man, I was a Brother with the Anglican Society of St Francis for thirteen years, six of which were spent in Papua New Guinea. These years continue to form my spirituality and my instinct for what is important in our faith. The years in Papua New Guinea also gave me a keen sense both of the incredible diversity of cultures and perspectives in God’s Church, and of the ways in which these are suppressed or distorted by our eurocentric history.
I then returned to the UK and started a phase of theological study and teaching. On completing my PhD in theology (on the treatment of unity and diversity in recent Anglican ecclesiology and church government) I moved into ministerial formation, including ten years here at The Queen’s Foundation as Director Studies. Queen’s was a very different place then, and taught me a lot about how ministerial formation works.
Finally, this period was followed by sixteen years at the University of Staffordshire, where I ended up as Professor of Values in Health and Social Care. This was the period in which I was able to focus on research as well as having the privilege of teaching students from a wide range of backgrounds and abilities.
I grew up as a Baptist and cut my spiritual teeth in the Charismatic House Churches. For most of my adult life I have been an Anglican, but became a Catholic in 2009. I’m still trying to get the hang of what that means!
Qualifications
1980 BSc Biological Sciences, UEA
1996 BD Theology, University of Birmingham
1999 PhD Theology, University of Birmingham
2000 PGCert in Further and Higher Education (Teaching and Learning) University of Gloucestershire
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy/Advance HE
Recognised Supervisor status with the UK College of Graduate Education
Roles at Queen’s
I am the Interim Academic Dean at Queen’s, which means that I am responsible for the organisation, delivery and assessment of all the taught academic programmes. I am also expecting to teach on a range of modules on the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and to supervise PhD students.
External roles and responsibilities
I am an Executive Editor of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality. In addition, I am a member of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality, the Society for the Study of Theology and the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.
I am also an Associate Supervisor for Westcott House and the Cambridge Theological Federation, where I am currently supervising doctoral candidates on subjects as diverse as the philosophy of Primary Care Chaplaincy; spiritual resilience in stroke survivors; church acoustics and meaning; blind and partially sighted Christians’ theology and experience of church; and the concept of emotional coregulation in relation to Christian youth work.
I am on the Board of Trustees for Age Connects West Midlands (formerly Age Concern)
Research interests and supervision
I am a constructive theologian at heart. My research style is to take a current event, a pastoral problem or a strange creature and nag at it until I can start to see what it may be telling us about God or God’s work in the world. I am not particularly interested in how theology helps us to live in the world – I am more interested in how our living in the world teaches us theology!
While at the University of Staffordshire my research mainly centred on the overlap between religion and health care, with a particular focus on the theology and spirituality of dementia. I’ve published a number of papers and book chapters on that and on a range of related topics, including ageing in the church; Chaplaincy; Spiritual care and the Cognitive Science of Religion; Death and Bereavement; and Pakistani Muslim responses to dementia.
My abiding preoccupation with dementia culminated in a book that was released in 2025 called Touching God: dementia and the bodies of Christ (Cascade).
Recently, my attention has turned to ecospirituality, and my second book (Asking the Beasts: a theological bestiary for the ecological crisis) was published in 2026. I am currently working on the phenomenon of Extinction Grief – why do we mourn when we hear that a creature has become extinct, and what does that tell us about our place in God’s creation?
Supervision
I love supervising research at both Master’s and Doctoral level. I am particularly interested and actively researching in the fields of Dementia, Chaplaincy Studies and Ecotheology, but am always happy to discuss other projects. Recent successful PhD students of mine have researched:
- The needs of South Asian people with dementia in a residential care setting
- Maurice Blondel’s theory of Action
- The significance of the concept of Ubuntu for cross-cultural social work practice
- Empowering South Asian Women to Effectively Manage Chronic Pain: A Multi-Phase Study
- Religious motivators to healthy exercise behaviour in a Christian Denominational context (Seventh Day Adventist)
- An Ethnographic Study Of The Roles And Work Of Mongolian Medical-Surgical Ward Nurses
Publications
- Kevern, P (2026) Asking the Beasts: a theological bestiary for the ecological crisis (Eugene: Cascade, 2026)
- Kevern, P (2025) Touching God: dementia and the bodies of Christ (Eugene: Cascade Books: 2025)
- Kevern, P (2025) The Fear of Dementia and the Challenge to Personhood. Exploring the depths of our existential dread in Lars Danbolt, Understanding Existential Health for Dementia Care: Supporting the Bio-Psycho-Social Approach London: Taylor and Francis
- Kevern, P, Walker, W, Jones, J, Owen, S and Esfathiou, N (2024) Influences on bereaved family uptake of chaplaincy support when viewing the deceased person: a case series study in controlled conditions Health and Social Care Chaplaincy 12(2) 191
- Adshead, C, Runacres, J and Kevern, P (2023) Exploring the Subjective Experiences of Peer-Led Social Support Groups for Individuals Bereaved by Suicide Illness, Crisis and Loss 33(1) 44-61
- Kevern, P (2023) Presence and Abstraction. Interpreting the practice of Eucharistic Adoration online Heythrop Journal 64(5) 644-655
- Kevern P, Lawrence D, Nazir N and Tsaroucha A. (2022) Religious Influences on the Experience of Family Carers of People with Dementia in a British Pakistani Muslim Community. Healthcare 30;11(1):120
- Kevern, P (2022) ‘Three-dimensional spiritual care for people living with dementia’ in Austad, Anne and Danbolt, Lars Johan (eds) Ta vare En bok om diakoni, sjelesorg og eksistensiell helse Festskrift til Hans Stifoss-Hanssen Oslo: VID 2022c
- Kevern, P, Lopes, R.G.D.C., Barroso, Á.E., Côrte, B. and Lucena, C., (2020). The Contribution of Church-Based Networks to Social Care in the Coronavirus Pandemic and Beyond: The Case of Pastoral da Pessoa Idosa in Brazil. Religions, 11(10), 486
- Kevern, P (2020) ‘It’s beautiful to be old.’ In search of emergent Catholic Social Teaching on Old Age New Blackfriars 101 (1093) 266-285
For a complete list of publications see https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=BidcnAcAAAAJ
