Our panel will include Alissa Wilkinson (2017 ADM Visiting Fellow), Michael Jensen (Rector, St Mark’s Darling Point), Scott Stephens (Editor, ABC Religion & Ethics) and Jenny Ihn (Artist). There will also be performances and interviews on the night.

This event will be run under Chatham House Rule and will not be recorded. Join us on the night to be part of the conversation.

Time: Refreshments from 5.30pm. Panel starts at 6.30pm. 

Date: Tues 10th October, 2017

Location: ADM Offices, Kent St, Sydney, Level One St Andrew's House, 464-480 Kent Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

PANELLISTS
Alissa Wilkinson is a staff writer and critic at Vox.com, covering film, culture and, sometimes, religion. She is also Associate Professor of English and Humanities at The King's College in New York City, where she teaches courses on criticism and cultural theory. Until September 2016, she was the critic at large at Christianity Today and has regularly contributed criticism and features at a number of publications, including Rolling Stone, Vulture, RogerEbert.com, Pacific Standard, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Books & Culture, and others. Alissa’s book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, and Politics at the End of the World, co-written with Robert Joustra, was published by Eerdmans in May 2016. She regularly speaks at conferences and events around the world about culture, criticism, religion, and film. Her research interests are in theology of contemporary literature, art and popular culture; art and culture criticism; and U.S. intellectual history, especially as it intersects with evangelicalism and art. 

Scott Stephens is Editor of the ABC’s Religion and Ethics website, and co-host (with Waleed Aly) of the radio program ‘The Minefield’ on ABC Radio National. He is also specialist commentator on religion and ethics for ABC radio and television. He is currently completing a book under the working title, Idiot Wind: The Media and its Threat to the Moral Life.

Michael Jensen is a theologian and author, as well as the Rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church, Darling Point, Sydney. He has often taken the opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues on both religious and secular platforms, and appears on ABC's The Drum. Michael has Honours degrees in both English and theology, and once was an English teacher at Sydney Grammar School. He completed his doctorate at Oxford University in 2008, which was later published as Martyrdom and Identity: The Self on Trial. Michael has written several books, including Is Forgiveness Really Free? and My God, My God – Is it Possible to Believe Anymore? His book You – An Introduction had the distinction of being temporarily banned from use in Religious Education classes by the NSW Department of Education in 2015. He taught theology at Sydney's Moore Theological College for 10 years, and continues to lecture around Australia and overseas. Michael is married to Catherine and they have four children. 

Jenny Ihn is a practising artist, whose current work explores the materiality of the art-object and its capacity for spiritual encounters in the process of art-making and art-viewing. Her research interest includes Far East Asian aesthetics, aesthetic experiences, mysticism, abstract expressionism, iconography and the mystery of the incarnation and the resurrection of the Incarnate-Son. She is a guest artist at Dominik Mersch Gallery in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney and has won the Dominik Mersch Award in 2013. She is also an ordained Anglican Deacon in the Diocese of Sydney. 
 

CHAIR

Kate Harrison Brennan was educated at the University of Sydney, where she received a BA (Hons. I) / LLB (Hons. I). She then studied at Magdalen College Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where she received an M.Phil (with Distinction) in Development Studies (International Development) and a D.Phil in Politics. She was awarded overall first place in the M.Phil. In the last year of her doctoral studies, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, where she held a Fleet Fellowship from Magdalen College Oxford, and a Harvey Fellowship from the Mustard Seed Foundation.

Kate was Director of Global Affairs and Strategic Communications at the Australian Consulate-General in New York, and then returned home to Australia to be Advisor to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She went on to co-found Global & Smart. Her edited volume, Making Global Institutions Work, was published by Routledge in September 2014. Kate was Young Australian of the Year for NSW in 2006. She is currently an Advisor to Christianity Today Women. Kate and her husband are part of St George’s Anglican Church, Paddington, where she is a Member of Parish Council.