Sean’s research project at the Margaret Beaufort Institute is focused on the Apocalypse as Liturgy: Prayer, Praise and Worship. That the Apocalypse is in some sense a richly “liturgical” text is not a novel idea, given its hymnic style and temple imagery. His aim is to take a fresh-look at the content, structure and early reception of the Book of Revelation in the light of recent developments in the study of Second Temple Jewish temple and synagogue worship and early Christian liturgy.
Sean was formerly Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at Heythrop College, University of London (2012-18), and then at the University of Roehampton (2018-21), where he remains an Honorary Research Fellow. He is currently the Chair of the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain (CBA-GB).
Publications include:
Hearing at the Boundaries of Vision: Education Informing Cosmology in Revelation 9 (London & New York, Bloomsbury, 2012)
‘Praising God in Adversity: Tyconius’ Ecclesiological Exegesis of the Celestial Liturgy (Rev 4-5)’, in Ian Boxall and Richard Tresley (eds.), The Book of Revelation and Its Interpreters: Short Studies and an Annotated Bibliography (Lanham MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), pp 27-51
‘“Simply to thy Cross I cling”: Hymns and the Performance of Memory in Victorian Highgate Cemetery’, in Marie-Therese Mäder, Alberto Saviello, and Baldassare Scolari (eds.), Highgate Cemetery: Image Practices in Past and Present, (Berlin, Nomos/Panos, 2020), pp 255-272.
His research interests are centred on the Apocalypse, poetic and prophetic literature in the Old Testament, hymns, prayer and praise in the Pauline literature and the Gospels, and patristic and medieval reception of Scripture (especially by the Venerable Bede).