Sr Ann Catherine Swailes, OP

Sr Ann Catherine Swailes, OP

Visiting Lecturer

Sr Ann is currently completing a doctorate in theology at Clare College, Cambridge, alongside her role as assistant chaplain at Fisher House, the Roman Catholic chaplaincy to the University of Cambridge. Her thesis focuses on the relationship between ecclesiology and the mystery of suffering. In particular, she is concerned to find ways of speaking about the Church which bestow dignity on those who suffer as members of the body of the Crucified Christ, while forbidding the abusive glamorization of pain all too easily associated with this idea.  Her research draws on Medieval literature (especially the writings of Julian of Norwich and William Langland) and devotional practice, as well as modern popular spirituality, to explore how the lives of Christians and Christian communities may be viewed as paschal liturgy, representing the Easter mystery to the world.

Sr Ann will also be teaching Christology, Trinitarian theology, and ecumenical and interfaith studies at St Mary’s University, Twickenham in the forthcoming academic year. She is a former member of the national Methodist-Roman Catholic dialogue, and has taught ecclesiology, ecumenism and liturgical theology at Blackfriars, Oxford.  She has written numerous book reviews for New Blackfriars, and published an article on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for a liturgical theology of suffering in Crucible, the Journal of Christian Social Ethics, (October 2020).