Rachel Ciano

ADM Senior Fellow 

Fellowship project: The Radical Impact of the Gospel - The Reformation's Transformation of Marriage and Ministry

Funding for Rachel’s project has been matched by Sydney Missionary and Bible College.

Rachel Ciano is a Lecturer in Christianity in History at Sydney Missionary Bible College. She has published and spoken widely on her research in church history, with a particular focus on the sixteenth-century Reformation period. Rachel is also a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, and a full member of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Rachel will use her ADM Fellowship to research and write on the radical nature of the gospel and its transformation of society, as demonstrated specifically in religious ministers being allowed to marry as part of the Protestant Reformation. Her PhD thesis examines how their households changed, what this looked like, how this affected ministry, and, at the core, what it demonstrated about the gospel. Rachel’s research will highlight one of innumerable examples of the social impact of the gospel, and that as the Reformers rediscovered the good news of Jesus, the effects were felt in the world at every level – personal, domestic and society at large.

Donna Toulmin

2023 ADM Senior Fellow

Fellowship project: Good News when Creation is in Crisis

Donna Toulmin is a writer and translation consultant. She has spent many years living in rural and regional areas of Asia and has engaged in linguistic consulting for a number of languages. She holds a Masters in Divinity, is a founding member of SIL International’s Creation Care Taskforce and has published work on communication, translation and creation care. Donna is also passionate about growing Christian engagement with ecological action, and growing awareness of the role that creation care can play in pointing others towards Jesus.

Donna will use her ADM Fellowship to write a book focusing on how ecological crises are an opportunity to engage our world with the Gospel. The book will not only explore how Christians can respond to environmental crises but will also share stories of Christians around the world who, in addressing ecological crises, are also communicating truths about Jesus, the gospel and Christian hope for new creation.

Dr Ruth Sutcliffe

 2023 ADM Senior Fellow

 Fellowship project: Persecution for the Name - Lessons from Scripture and the Early Christian Church

Dr Ruth Sutcliffe is Senior Lecturer at James Cook University. She holds a PhD from Christ College and a Masters of Divinity from Morling College, and has published work on early church history and trinitarian theology. Alongside her work in veterinary science, Ruth has also taught theology at The Hindustan Bible Institute and College in Chennai, India, and is an experienced cross-cultural educator.

Ruth will use her ADM Fellowship to complete a book based on her PhD research, which will focus both on the New Testament’s teachings on persecution, and the theological reflections of the early church’s experiences of persecution. This book will explore how Christians can respond biblically to persecution, and help the non-persecuted church to better understand what persecution is (and is not) so that they might better support and serve the persecuted church. 

Zoe Earnshaw

 2023 ADM Senior Fellow

Fellowship project: Real Life Bible - A new YouTube Channel with Supporting Video Ministry

Zoe Earnshaw is an experienced executive TV producer. Having worked for Princess Productions for Channel 4 in London, she also founded and oversaw Clayton TV – an online Christian TV channel. She holds an MA Oxon in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Oxford University) and MA in TV and Video Production (Sunderland University, UK) and a Bachelor of Divinity from Moore Theological College.

Zoe will use her ADM Fellowship to develop a new Bible teaching video format informed by the communication techniques of YouTube, and launch a new YouTube channel for Christian women called ‘Real Life Bible’. Zoe is passionate about finding ways to make theologically rich Bible teaching both accessible and compelling, and so extending the reach of the gospel by creating content suited to wide-reaching digital platforms. This project aims to equip Christians to confidently apply the Bible to their unique social and cultural contexts and to open up the Bible to those who have questions about God and meaning and are looking for answers.

Louisa Raggatt

2023 ADM Fellow

Fellowship project: Partying for Jesus - A practical guide to help Christians share hospitality for the sake of the gospel

Louisa Raggatt is a digital content creator specialising in earned media, content marketing and social media marketing. She founded Australia’s second blogger outreach agency, Brand Meets Blog, and engaged with a range of high-profile international clients during her time as agency director. Louisa is also a passionate community builder (both online and offline), and has spent more than 15 years growing and shaping communities in various professional, voluntary and church ministry contexts.

Louisa will use her ADM Fellowship to write a book providing a practical guide to hospitality, which will address many of the challenges people face when opening their homes to others. Louisa sees hospitality as a particularly important opportunity for Christians to share and live the Gospel, especially in a social context where many are increasingly hesitant to open and share their homes with others. She also intends to use her Fellowship to develop a blog that will build community around this topic - both amongst those engaging with her work, and with other bloggers and public figures participating in this conversation.  

Madeleine Galea

2022 ADM Fellow

Fellowship project: Hiring practices for the local church

Funding for Madeleine’s Fellowship has been matched by Reach Australia.

Madeleine is the former Recruit and Assessment Manager for Geneva Push/Reach Australia and is currently completing her Bachelor of Psychology at Macquarie University. In her role at Reach Australia/Geneva Push Madeleine walked alongside potential church planters through a behavioural assessment, to help them identify if church planting is the right fit for them. Madeleine has a passion for seeing 'a round peg in a round hole', where someone's strengths align with their role. Drawing on her experience, Madeleine used her fellowship to research hiring practices across Australian and US churches, analysing churches with a high staff retention rate. She also used her Fellowship to produce a set of hiring tools for churches in Australia across 9 ministry roles.

Dr Marlies Hartkamp

2022 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Fellowship project: Disability theology and ministry in context

Funding for Marlies’ Fellowship has been matched by individual donors.

Marlies Hartkamp has extensive experience in disability ministry in several Asian countries where she has lived and worked. She has a Master’s degree in special education from the University of Groningen, and is currently in the final stages of her doctoral studies with a focus on disability theology. While living overseas, Marlies worked with children with disabilities who were often marginalised and had very little opportunity to develop their God-given potential. Her passion is to see these children develop and thrive. Marlies used her ADM Fellowship to work on several journal articles in the area of disability theology. She also wrote a series of articles and developed a resource for Christian organisations to encourage the active engagement of people with disabilities in church and ministry.

Penny Reeve

2022 ADM Senior Fellow

Fellowship project: Spiritual questioning in young adult fiction

Penny Reeve is an established children’s and young adult author. Writing as Penny Reeve, Penny Jaye and Ella Shine, she has had more than twenty books published for children and young people. Her books have won the CALEB Prize for faith-inspired writing several times, including the young adult category for ‘Out of the Cages’, her young adult novel about human trafficking. She also holds a Bachelor of Teaching and a Master of Arts in Writing and Literature (Deakin University). Penny used her ADM Fellowship to research and write a collection of short fiction stories for Young Adult (YA) readers that creatively explore the ways adolescent protagonists and narrative plots can interact with spiritual questions. This project sets spiritual questioning alongside common YA themes such as coming-of-age, identity, power, purpose and understanding our place in the universe. Grounding her creative practice in relevant scholarship and research, Penny’s anthology aims to create a safe literary space for adolescent readers to consider faith, doubt and belief.

Dr Katrina Clifford

2022 ADM Senior Fellow

Fellowship project: Training young women; Transforming college cultures

Dr Katrina Clifford is the former Dean of Academics at Robert Menzies College, an Anglican residential college affiliated with Macquarie University, where she loves training, supporting and encouraging university students to grow in their faith, abilities and maturity. She is particularly passionate about supporting and training young women, and empowering them to help change problematic college cultures. In particular, Katrina longs to see her industry transformed by a generation of young women who are trained and equipped for servant-hearted leadership, who can then take their university college experience into their future lives. Her project aimed at addressing the absence of female student leadership within colleges, and the lack of support that young women seeking positions of leadership have in this context. During her Fellowship she developed training materials and structures to encourage, support and equip young women for leadership, for both their own growth and for the good of their college communities and cultures.

Dr Laurel Moffatt

2022 ADM Senior Fellow

Fellowship project: Brokenness and restoration; Despair and hope: A nonfiction & memoir book

Dr Laurel Moffatt is a writer and researcher with a PhD in English Renaissance Literature. Her specialty is the early 17th century. Her writing has appeared in ABC Religion & Ethics, the Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Spectator. Laurel used her ADM Fellowship to work on a book for a general audience that explores the theme of brokenness – in the self, the community, in literature and Scripture – as well as the restoration and renewal that may spring from it.

Dr Ruth Lukabyo

2021 ADM Senior Research Fellow

The History of Youth Ministry in Australia

Ruth is a Senior Lecturer and Dean of Women at Youthworks College and completed her PhD in church history at Macquarie University. She is author of From a Ministry for Youth to a Ministry of Youth: Aspects of Protestant Youth Ministry in Sydney 1930-1959 (Wipf & Stock, 2020). Building on her research and teaching, Ruth used her ADM Fellowship to work on a series of journals articles as well as a popular level book on the history of youth ministry in Australia. The goal of Ruth’s book is to elucidate the kind of theology and methodology that has shaped youth ministry in the past and continues to influence how we do ministry today. Its ultimate goal is to help youth and children’s ministers analyse their current context and think theologically and critically about their practice, to nurture thoughtful and biblical ministry that will grow God's kingdom.

Rev. Elizabeth Strachan 

2021 ADM Fellow 

Neither Height nor Depth: Bipolar in the Hands of a Good God

Lily is a Deacon in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, ordained as a chaplain to Macquarie University and Robert Menzies College. She also serves as a Senior Staff Worker with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) at Macquarie University. Lily holds degrees in theology (BDiv, Moore), law and economics (University of Sydney) and is passionate about engaging young people with the good news of Jesus. She was diagnosed with depression in 2003 and bipolar in 2008 and loves sharing with others the transformative difference knowing Christ makes to all of life. Lily used her ADM Fellowship to research and write a book for those who suffer with bipolar and its associated symptoms, seeking to provide comfort and hope from God’s Word, interwoven with personal testimony and practical wisdom. She draws inspiration from her ministry experiences, her felt need for this resource and her own pilgrimage living with mental illness through university studies, a career in law and as a minister to others.

Dr Emma Knowles

2021 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Re-Reading Medieval Biblical Poetry in a Contemporary World

Emma is Associate Lecturer in English at the University of Sydney during 2020 and a former Gates Cambridge scholar who completed her PhD in 2019. Her dissertation focused on the representation of God, humanity and nature in the Old English poems Genesis A, Exodus and Daniel. Emma used her Fellowship to work on her first book on this topic and present a new outlook on the vernacular reception of the Bible. Emma’s Fellowship project also included developing seminars aimed at high school students on the biblical understanding of nature for a related HSC English unit.

Stephanie Kate Judd

2021 ADM Senior Fellow

Human Dignity in the Public Sphere

Stephanie is a solicitor who recently read theological studies at the University of Oxford where she also graduated from The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. Stephanie is concerned that the consensus around the unconditional value and dignity of the human person is under pressure in our common life. Seeing a gap in the public conversation in this area, she sees opportunities to draw on her experience as a lawyer and of living with a physical disability to find creative ways of engaging the world with the truth and beauty of the Christian worldview, particularly as it relates to disability, incapacity, limitations and constraint. Stephanie used her ADM Senior Fellowship to engage on these topics and build her body of written work, publishing articles and long-form essays in major public outlets.

Dr Emma Kluge 

2021 ADM Senior Research Fellow

The History of the Church and Decolonisation in the Pacific

Emma is a historian who recently submitted her PhD at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on decolonisation in the Pacific and more broadly on human rights, self-determination and international governance. Emma’s ADM Senior Fellowship will explore the history of Pacific churches during the period of decolonisation and focus on the origins of the Pacific Conference of Churches and other regional bodies in the 1960s. Her research contributes to a greater awareness of the history of the Pacific church and help to inform Australian churches and NGOs engagement with the Pacific today. Thus, while working on her first academic book, the main public engagement output of Emma’s Fellowship will be to develop a series of short accessible resources for the Australian church on the history of the church in the Pacific that foregrounds Pacific voices through history.

Jodie Mciver

2021 ADM Fellow

Bringing Forth Life: God’s Purposes in Pregnancy and Birth

Jodie is a registered midwife at Blue Mountains Hospital working throughout the maternity unit in antenatal, birthing, postnatal care and home visiting. Along with her Bachelor of Midwifery (UTS), she has a Bachelor of Theology (Moore Theological College) and serves in ministry at Blackheath Anglican Church with her husband Tim and their three children. Drawing on her personal, professional and theological background, Jodie used her ADM Fellowship to develop an accessible book to prepare and support women and their partners through the life-changing experiences of pregnancy, birth and meeting their baby from a Christian perspective.

Amanda Mason

2020 ADM Senior Fellow

Amanda is Evangelist and Community Chaplain with the Sydney Anglican Department of Evangelism and New Churches, seeking to equip the local church to respond to the evangelism and discipleship needs of Buddhists in Australia. Amanda was born in Sydney to a Thai mother and Australian father. Her upbringing and education has given her a dual-belonger status: she is part of the Christian community shaped by majority Western values, but she also has lived access to the experience of first and second generation migrants of Buddhist cultural background. She first encountered Jesus and came to faith through the community witness of her Christian high school friends. She completed a ministry apprenticeship with the Evangelical Union at the University of Sydney, served with an independent Thai Christian fellowship and was the first Australian participant in an inter-agency training program aimed at equipping Asian Christians for missional leadership. Amanda is studying part-time at SMBC for her Masters of Divinity (MDiv). Holding a Masters of Psychology (Clinical), and with professional experience working among culturally-diverse clients of the public mental health system, she has a passion for effective intercultural engagement in mental health and church life.

Fellowship Project: ‘Communicating the evangelism and discipleship needs of people from Buddhist cultural backgrounds’ 

Amanda’s Fellowship project addresses the variability in the effectiveness of local church evangelism and discipleship among people of South East Asian backgrounds living in Australia. This can be effectively remedied by engaging Australian Christians with an existing, under-accessed knowledge base to support the meaningful engagement of people of Thai, Cambodian, Myanmarese, Lao and Vietnamese cultural backgrounds with the gospel within existing local church communities. People from South East Asian cultural backgrounds are distinct from Chinese or East Asian communities. They differ in the influential form of Buddhism (Theravadan rather than Mahayanan) and character values which shape national and cultural life. Where communities from China and East Asia are well-resourced by Australian Chinese and Korean church networks, South East Asian communities fall beyond the reach of these networks and may rely upon poorly-resourced and homogeneous ethnic fellowships at best. Better targeted evangelism, discipleship and mobilisation of people of South East Asian backgrounds will assist churches to respond with effective contextualised approaches. This can be set in motion through this Fellowship project. I will disseminate existing expertise about missiology in the Buddhist context, engaging the Christian public, and creating new information local to the Australian context. I will also promote greater connection and exchange of information between the Australian church community and Asian missiological networks. Within a globalised age, this action redresses an obvious 'missing link' in Australian church engagement with the global Christian community.

Katie Tunks Leach

2020 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Katie is an academic, registered nurse and ambulance chaplain. After gaining her registration as a nurse in 1997 she specialised in emergency and trauma nursing, where she found her passion for walking alongside and caring for others during their worst days. In 2009, Katie turned her focus to education and began working casually for universities, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students on topics including critical care, empathic care and communication, and the social determinants of health.  

In 2017, Katie accepted a role as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney where she now teaches postgraduate and undergraduate nursing students and is a member of The Empathy Initiative research group. During this time, Katie also became a Volunteer Chaplain for the New South Wales Ambulance Service, where she provides pastoral care to paramedics and flight nurses.

Katie has a Bachelor of Nursing, Bachelor of Teaching (Primary & Secondary), Graduate Certificate in Critical Care Nursing (Emergency), Master of Advanced Nursing (Education), and is currently a PhD candidate, with a research focus on the role and value of chaplains in the ambulance service.

Fellowship Project: ‘Caring for the carers: A project to establish an evidence-base for ambulance chaplaincy’ 

The aim of Katie’s project is to advance ambulance chaplaincy, through individual research and collaboration with industry stakeholders. A significant body of evidence has demonstrated the high personal toll that responding to emergencies and traumatic events can take on paramedics, including developing illnesses such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. While there is evidence from the field of psychology on how to support ambulance staff, little is currently known about the role that spiritual and pastoral care plays. Katie’s project aims to obtain both paramedic and chaplain perceptions on the role chaplains play in the ambulance service, and the value they provide both to individuals and the organisation.

Working collaboratively with staff from the New South Wales Ambulance Service, Katie will conduct research and publish the findings in peer-reviewed journals. The outputs of her project will establish an evidence base to underpin the provision of pastoral and spiritual care by chaplains in our ambulance services.

Claire Zorn

2020 ADM Senior Creative Fellow

Claire is the author of three novels for young adults. Her first novel, The Sky So Heavy, was a 2014 Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book for Older Readers and shortlisted for both the 2013 Aurealis Awards for Best Young Adult Novel and the 2014 Inky Awards. Her second young adult novel, The Protected, was the winner of the 2015 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Fiction, the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, the West Australian Premier’s Book Award and the 2015 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year for Older Readers. Her most recent novel, One Would Think the Deep was awarded the 2017 CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award, The Queensland Literary Award, and the Gold Inky Award.

After graduating from Western Sydney University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Claire began studying fashion and textile design at UTS, however after becoming dissatisfied with the elitist nature of the fashion industry she cut her study short. It wasn’t until 2006 that she began to pursue a literary career and graduated from UTS with a post graduate diploma in writing in 2007. Claire secured her first publishing contract with University of Queensland Press in 2012.

Claire’s first picture book, No Place for an Octopus, which she both authored and illustrated is to be released November 2019.

Fellowship project: ‘The unauthorised autobiography of Stella Q’

Claire will use her Fellowship to write her first novel for an adult audience while developing her profile of public engagement at events and in the media. The novel (working title: 'The Unauthorised Autobiography of Stella Q') will centre on a highly successful and critically acclaimed (fictional) contemporary artist, Stella Q. Stella's position in the conceptual arts is akin to (non-fictional) artists such as Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst.

Claire’s novel will explore the fashionable concept of artistic and personal authenticity, something which has become elevated in recent times and is somewhat juxtaposed with society’s embrace of post-modernist theories of relativism and post-truth. Concurrent to this will be an investigation into the ethical crisis we experience when an artist’s personal failings cloud the integrity of their work.

In a return to Claire’s background in the fine arts, the novel will touch on the eternal question: ‘what is art?’ and poke gentle fun at the conceptual art movement which peaked in the late nineties and arguably drowned out much of the more aesthetically centred works of the period. Intertwined with this theme will be an exploration of the artist as a celebrity (a concept which emerged with Andy Warhol and peaked with artists such as Emin and Hirst) and the currency this celebrity holds within both the art world and the fashion industry.

This novel will be Claire’s first to be aimed at an adult audience and will endeavour to tap into both the commercial and literary market. Claire hopes it will open up for her further opportunities for public engagement at festivals, events and in the media.

Dr Robyn Wrigley-Carr

2020 ADM Senior Research Fellow 

Robyn completed her B.Ed (Hons) at Sydney University before moving to England where she studied her MA (Language and Literature) at the University of London and then worked in religious publishing. While studying her Masters degree in spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, Robyn met her wonderful Kiwi husband. They returned to Sydney where Robyn lectured in Christian Spirituality for 8 years at the Australian College of Ministries, becoming a Mum of three children en route. In 2009, the family moved to Scotland so Robyn could undertake a PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 2013. Since 2014, Robyn has been Senior Lecturer in Theology and Spirituality at Alphacrucis College, Sydney. She is the editor of Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book (2018) and has a monograph forthcoming, The Spiritual Formation of Evelyn Underhill (to be published in March 2020, SPCK London).

Fellowship project: ‘Prayer, passion and courage: Women of influence through the ages’

This project involves researching the biography, context, and public and devotional writings of twelve Christian women for a book publication. As female voices remain under-represented in the public arena and in writing, this project aims to make accessible the stories of a diverse group of exemplary Christian women. Those chosen were leaders and pioneers in the public sphere, who also left evidence of their devotional lives undergirding that influence. This book will explore how their vibrant, prayer lives supported and motivated their active, outward service.

I have selected twelve women from a variety of cultures and historical periods who displayed this mixed life of prayer and engagement in society and Church. I will emphasise how each woman’s external, public influence was birthed and supported by their hidden, devotional lives. The twelve women include Hildegard of Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Josephine Butler, Élisabeth Leseur, Amy Carmichael, Florence Nightingale, Edith Stein, "Etty" Hillesum, Sojourner Truth and Janet Matthews. Their lives tell incredible stories of courageous, public engagement and influence, alongside passionate, devotional writings. Each sketch will include quotes from their personal letters, prayers or journals. Hopefully, providing these excerpts will enkindle and deepen the reader's own passion for God and desire to make a difference in the world. This book will be a reminder that effective public engagement is dependent upon a vibrant life of prayer.

Rebecca Oakley

2020 ADM Fellow 

Rebecca has been serving cross-culturally since 2012 in a large mission organisation with 4000 workers from more than 70 countries. She and her husband led a multi-ethnic, multi-generational team comprised of both support-raised and salaried workers spread across three countries in South-East Asia that was in turn working with around 700 churches, training and equipping them to use sport as a bridge into communities.

Prior to moving overseas Rebecca studied Arts and Law at UNSW, trained as a lawyer and then worked for ten years in management for a multi-national publishing company. It was in that business context that Rebecca discovered a love for training and mentoring people and for doing research and analysis that gives organisations the best quality information possible on which to make informed strategic decisions.

In South-East Asia, God grew Rebecca’s understanding of His world and her heart to see young people reached with the gospel and discipled into leaders. Having worked in very different but equally complex organisations she is interested in the dynamics and cultures of organisations and the role of leaders within them. Rebecca believes healthy Christian organisations which are both grounded in biblical leadership and have robust leadership and management skills allow individuals to flourish and be better able to bring the gospel, justice and mercy to a lost and hurting world.

Fellowship project: ‘Entrusted with the sent: Leadership skills in support-raised organisations’

Christian organisations where individuals raise their own financial support are growing in number and size. For countless people, they are the public face of Christianity.  Often they care for vulnerable people who would otherwise fall through the gaps of programs run by governments and secular NGOs. Not just small groups of like-minded people, some of these Christian organisations are large, multicultural organisations with complex governance structures, entrusted with significant financial resources. Support-raising means that they have unique leadership and management dynamics and are increasingly grappling with developing their leaders.  Leaders face many challenges in these organisations not least that workers feel a sense of dual accountability; to the leaders who have responsibility and accountability for them in their roles and to the churches and individuals that provide their salary and financial stability.

Christian organisations strive to model their leadership on beautiful images in the Bible of a leader as servant, shepherd and steward. In fact, these images are so compelling that we see them taking hold in the wider business world. However, when it comes to practical leadership skills like conflict resolution, communication and change management, most Christian organisations rely on resources developed in secular leadership contexts with little thought to the challenges of contextualising them to take account of organisational values and practices.

Engaging with biblical leadership theories, secular leadership resources and with specific leaders, Rebecca will develop a series of online articles and a podcast which develops a more holistic understanding of key leadership skills needed within the culture of support-raised organisations.

Brooke Prentis

2019 ADM Senior Fellow

Brooke Prentis is an Aboriginal Christian leader from the Waka Waka peoples. She is a Chartered Accountant by profession with over 15 years senior management experience in the corporate world including top 100 ASX listed companies. Brooke has a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Japanese and Political Science, from the University of Queensland. She has also completed the Australian Institute of Company Directors course and serves on a number of corporate and Christian boards. Brooke has a keen interest in theology, having co-written, written, and presented several theological papers over the last two years. A founding board member of NAIITS Australia, Brooke is currently studying for a Masters of Theology through NAIITS, in partnership with Whitley College and the University of Divinity, as well as being a research scholar for the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre (PaCT). 

Brooke has served as Aboriginal spokesperson and CEO for Common Grace, a growing movement of over 40,000 Australian Christians passionate about Jesus and Justice and the Coordinator of the Grasstree Gathering, a growing network of over 200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Christian leaders from across Australia and across denominations. Addressing issues of national justice, Brooke works ecumenically to advocate for friendship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.  She is a much sought after speaker and writer who is also a community pastor with a vision "to build an Australia built on truth, justice, love and hope".  

Project: Resourcing the Australian Church to engage, build and deepen relationships with Aboriginal peoples, Aboriginal Christian Leaders and Aboriginal justice

Over the last seven years, I believe God has taken me, an Aboriginal Christian leader, across Australia to interact with Christians from many denominations. My primary ministry has been to bring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Christians together through our common love for Jesus, working toward healing and hope in these lands now called Australia. However, I have found some road blocks. Such road blocks include: the local church’s inability to engage with the Aboriginal community; the non-Aboriginal Australian church not knowing Aboriginal Christian leaders, organisations and ministries, and individuals being overwhelmed by the injustices facing Aboriginal peoples today. The question I often hear is: “Where do I start?”

This project will help address these road blocks by providing resources led and written by an Aboriginal Christian leader, developed through meetings, seminars, and yarning across the breadth and depth of the Australian church (Aboriginal, non-Aboriginal, organisations, ministries, denominations, congregations, individual Christians).  The aim is to assist people to engage, build, and deepen relationships with Aboriginal peoples and Aboriginal Christian leaders while pursuing Aboriginal justice. This will be a resource aimed at non-Aboriginal peoples, providing ways for getting to know Aboriginal peoples, ways to learn more about Aboriginal history, culture, and our discipleship, as well as appropriate ways to interact and respond. It will also be a useful tool for Aboriginal Christian leaders to use in their ministries. My hope is that through listening and walking together in following Jesus we might ultimately open a way for reconciliation and conciliation in these lands now called Australia.

Rev. Dr Dani Treweek

2019 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Dani is a native Sydney-sider who has completed a B.A. at Sydney University, a B.Div (Hons) at Moore Theological College and a PhD through St Mark's Theological Centre, Canberra and Charles Sturt University. Her postgraduate research focused on developing a theologically and pastorally integrated ethic of singleness, with particular reference to eschatology. She hopes to equip the evangelical Christian community in Sydney and beyond in rediscovering a biblically faithful understanding of a single Christian’s identity, purpose and place of belonging.

Prior to beginning her PhD research, Dani served for almost seven years as the women’s ministry trainer/co-ordinator and assistant minister at St Matthias Anglican Church, Centennial Park. She also worked as a member of the faculty of Youthworks College in 2016. She is the chair of the Single Minded Conference (launched in 2018), member of the General Synod of Australia, deputy chair of Liberty Christian Ministries, council member for St Catherine’s Anglican Girls School in Waverley, and a member of the Youthworks Academic Subcommittee. A frequent speaker at Christian events and conferences, she has presented at academic conferences (both here in Australia and overseas) and is ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

Project: The End of Singleness: Towards a theological ethic of authentic identity, purpose and belonging for the unmarried Christian     

My fellowship project is motivated by my longstanding passion for the encouragement, pastoral care, equipping and inclusion of unmarried Christians (whether never married, divorced or widowed). Many single Christians in Sydney and beyond report feeling isolated, marginalised, unwelcome and even invisible within their church communities, while many ministry staff and married Christians report feeling unsure about how to go about loving, encouraging and supporting their unmarried brothers and sisters in Christ. An inadequate theological and pastoral approach to singleness has also impacted upon our evangelism of those in our broader society who are unmarried. For example, in comparing Australian Census data with the findings of the National Church Life Survey, there are approximately half the number of never married individuals and divorcees in our churches than there are, proportionally speaking, in the broader Australian population.

My research aims to construct a theologically robust and pastorally integrated Christian ethic of the unmarried Christian life. By focusing particularly on the contribution of eschatological thought to such an ethic, I seek to equip evangelical Christians in rediscovering a truly biblical understanding of the identity, purpose and place of belonging of single Christians which goes beyond a mere utilitarian approach to the topic. As part of my ADM fellowship, I will be working on completing and submitting my academic PhD thesis, using themes of my research to author a popular-level manuscript for publication, continuing to speak at various conferences and events and overseeing the ongoing ministry of the popular Single Minded Conference.

Dr Roberta Kwan

2019 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Roberta received her PhD from Macquarie University in 2016. Her research centres on the intersections between literary works, theology and religion, and the history of ideas. She has published several academic articles in literary journals, and her first scholarly book is currently being reviewed by a university press. In 2018, she was awarded a Humanities Travelling Fellowship by the Australian Academy of the Humanities to conduct research overseas for a new postdoctoral project. Since 2010, Roberta has taught English literature and academic writing at Macquarie University and The University of Sydney.

Project: ‘Love The Neighbour?’: Shakespeare and Neighbourly Love

Roberta will work on two projects during her ADM Fellowship. First, she plans to complete her scholarly book on Shakespeare and interpretation. The problem of interpretation and representations of humans as interpreters of themselves, others and the world feature in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Her book explores the influences upon this theme of interpretation of key theological issues that contributed significantly to an understanding of human knowing and its limitations in the playwright’s time. The book traces these influences to our day as we continue to turn to Shakespeare’s works to discuss and debate questions of how we know and who we are.

Roberta’s ADM Fellowship project title is taken from her second project, which she has begun researching and plans to develop into a full-length study. ‘“Love thy neighbour”? Shakespeare and Neighbourly Love’ considers how Shakespeare’s works absorb, refigure and interrogate what was seemingly early modern England’s predominant mode of ethics—theological ethics. One biblical imperative encapsulates this ethic: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ This project asks how conversations about literary engagements with the idea of neighbourliness in the past may help us reimagine how we can live together in the present.  

Emma Pitman

2019 ADM Creative Fellow

Emma is a writer from Sydney. She received her Bachelor of Communications (Writing and Cultural Studies) with Honours from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2015. Since then, she has written about gender, power and culture for a variety of publications including The Lifted Brow and Meanjin. Her essay Misogyny is a Human Pyramid which was published at Meanjin online was one of the most widely read pieces published on the site, being shared close to 9,000 times. In January 2018, Emma was interviewed about this piece on Parallel Lines, a program for Melbourne radio station Triple R. Her most recent essay, Unravelling the Tapestry, was published in the summer 2018 edition of Meanjin.

Fellowship Project: Tension: Collected Essays on Gender, Power and Hope

Over the course of the fellowship, I aim to produce 8-10 lyric essays that discuss gender and power. Central to my writing is the desire to make sustained critique of asymmetrical power structures accessible, useful and ultimately empowering while giving readers the tools to understand their place within these structures and their unique ability to disrupt them. As a form, the lyric essay can be both critical and creative, researched and reflective, and lends itself to gentle but powerful revelations of uncomfortable truths. This form also allows for measured vulnerability, which I believe is an important gesture to make when asking others to confront uncomfortable realities about how power operates around and through them. The overarching theme of the collection is gender and power, but each essay will explore this through something more particular. I will seek publication for each essay throughout the year, and will ultimately end the year with a cohesive collection of essays that she can pitch as a book. I will seek publication in literary journals like The Lifted Brow, Meanjin and Overland, as well as more mainstream publications. Writers like Rebecca Solnit, Helen Garner, Leslie Jamison and Durga Chew Bose have inspired my work.

Rev. Dr Kirsten Birkett

2018 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Rev. Dr Kirsten Birkett is Lecturer in Ethics, Philosophy and Church History at Oak Hill Theological College in London, a Latimer Research Fellow, and author of several books including Resilience: A Spiritual Project. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Kirsten spent six months researching what the bible has to say about happiness and wrote the bulk of a new book. While at ADM, Kirsten also completed four academic papers for the peer-reviewed journals Journal of Practical Theology, Journal of Christianity and Psychology, Journal of Happiness Studies, and Churchman, and wrote a new popular book manuscript on Puritan spiritual reflection practices. Since completing her Fellowship, Kirsten has written about happiness for Eternity (here and here), Case Magazine, Themelios, was the featured guest on the Moore College Centre for Christian Living podcast episode ‘The Pursuit of Christian Happiness,’ and taught a two-part masterclass on happiness at ADM’s 2019 School of Theology, Culture & Public Engagement. Connect with Kirsten through her website.

Dr Yixin Jiang Xu

2018 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Dr Yixin Jiang Xu researches in attachment theory as applied to both parent-child bonds and adult romantic relationships and leads community parenting seminars. Prior to coming to ADM, she completed a PhD in Psychology at the University of Sydney and worked as a researcher, looking at how to engage fathers in parenting programs. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Yixin undertook extensive research for a new book project on Christian parenting in a Chinese Australian cultural context. She also co-authored a number of peer-reviewed publications in academic journals in her field, such as Journal of Child and Family Studies, Australian Psychologist, and Journal of Child Psychiatry and Human Development. During her time at ADM, Yixin also ran a 6-week Circle of Security parenting course at West Sydney Chinese Christian Church through First Light Care, a Christian counselling and education centre, where she continues to be involved as a regular presenter. Yixin is also involved in delivering training for ADM’s Raising Resilient Parents program, created by Sarah Condie (ADM Mental Health & Pastoral Care Institute) and Lyn Worsley (The Resilience Centre).

Kate Bradford

2018 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Kate Bradford lectures in Advanced Pastoral Care at Moore Theological College, with Barry McGrath from Anglicare. She is also a Chaplain to students at the College. Prior to coming to ADM, Kate was Anglicare Chaplaincy Coordinator at Westmead Children’s Hospital and before that she was a CMS missionary in Tanzania. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Kate completed original research on Pastoral Theology from a Reformed Evangelical perspective. This research has allowed Kate to work her way closer towards entry into the Doctoral Program at Moore Theological College. During her Fellowship, Kate also had the opportunity to undertake a research visit to meet with Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, and to attend the Christian Association of Psychological Research and International Spiritual Care Conference. During her Fellowship, Kate presented her research at the Moore College Postgraduate Seminar, the Evangelical History Association Conference, and the Australian Centre for Wesleyan Research Conference. As a result of these presentations, Kate has authored two peer-reviewed journal articles in her field. Connect with Kate on her blog Pastoral Thinking.

Monica Cook

2018 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Monica Cook runs sex and fertility workshops for couples and is completing her Masters in Sexual and Reproductive Health (Counselling) at the University of Sydney. Prior to coming to ADM, she worked in science communication with Questacon, Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Museum of Human Disease at UNSW. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Monica developed four new workshops aimed at Christian audiences on the topics of female sexual wellness, sexual wellness for couples, the theology of ‘good sex,’ and natural fertility. Monica presented her project to various audiences, including two church groups. During her time at ADM, she was also approached by Family Planning NSW to adapt her course on natural fertility for presentation to general practitioners, and was invited to sit on the board for the Australasian Institute for Restorative Reproductive Medicine. During her Fellowship Monica was interviewed by Eternity and drafted a number of articles for publication. Monica also founded, and held the inaugural meeting for, a support network for Christians working in an area related to sexuality called the Christian Society for Sexual Wellbeing (CSSW).

Dr Kirsty Beilharz

2018 ADM Senior Creative Fellow

Dr Kirsty Beilharz is Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics & Society at The University of Notre Dame Australia, in collaboration with St. Vincent's Health Network, investigating spiritual care in health. She is also the author of Music Remembers Me: Connection and Wellbeing in Dementia. Kirsty is a composer and researcher using music to improve the quality of life for people with dementia, chronic pain and those receiving palliative care. Prior to coming to ADM, she was the Director of Music Engagement at HammondCare. During her ADM Senior Creative Fellowship, Kirsty composed a piece of instrumental music intended as a vigil to support the emotional and spiritual needs of the person at the end of life. She also completed the draft manuscript for her PhD thesis in theology with the Sydney College of Divinity. During her Fellowship, Kirsty was the invited Keynote Speaker at the ACOM, SCD and CSU Ageing Conference Embracing life and gathering wisdom: Theological, pastoral and clinical insights into human flourishing at the end of life. She also taught a masterclass at ADM’s 2019 School of Theology, Culture & Public Engagement. Connect with Kirsty via her website.

Dr Meredith Lake

2017 ADM Senior Research Fellow 

Dr Meredith Lake is the host of Soul Search on ABC Radio National and the author of The Bible in Australia: a cultural history (2018) and Faith in Action: Hammondcare (2013). Prior to her time at ADM, she was a freelance researcher and writer. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Meredith wrote the bulk of her book The Bible in Australia and submitted the final manuscript to NewSouth Books for publication. This book went on to win the 2018 Australian Christian Book of the Year. As an ADM Fellow, Meredith also co-edited an issue of the St Mark's Review (July 2017) and made her first appearance at the Sydney Writer’s Festival on a panel entitled, ‘The Good Book?’ (she made her second appearance hosting a panel in 2019). During her Fellowship she received numerous invitations to give keynote lectures in Australia and New Zealand, including delivering our 2018 ADM Annual Public Lecture. Connect with Meredith on her website, Facebook or on twitter at @meredithlake1.

Dr Louise Gosbell

2017 ADM Senior Research Fellow

Dr Louise Gosbell is author of The Poor, the Crippled, the Blind and the Lame and lectures in New Testament at Mary Andrews College. She is also the Sydney Regional Coordinator for CBM’s Luke 14 Disability Inclusive Churches Program. During her ADM Senior Research Fellowship, Louise continued work on a project exploring the experiences of people living with disability within the Sydney Anglican Diocese following the 2009 Synod motion, Resolution 34/09 People Affected by Disability. She authored a manual on disability inclusion designed to assist churches in the Diocese, completed the manuscript for her first sole-authored book with Mohr Siebeck, and won a DAAD scholarship at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal where she presented her research in two seminars. Since her Fellowship, Louise has written for ABC Religion & Ethics, Insights Magazine and was invited to deliver the 2019 Annual Lecture for the Sydney College of Divinity. She also taught a masterclass at ADM’s 2019 School of Theology, Culture & Public Engagement. 

Dr Alix Beeston

2017 ADM Senior Research Fellow                                    

Dr Alix Beeston is currently Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University. During her ADM Senior Fellowship, Alix completed the manuscript for In and Out of Sight, her first sole-authored book with Oxford University Press, published a number of articles in academic journals in her field, including Arizona Quarterly and Modernism/modernity, wrote a new essay that was subsequently accepted at the journal Signs, developed a creative online project on Instagram, and was the MC of the 2017 ADM Annual Public Lecture. Her work as a Senior Fellow contributed to her success in securing her first permanent Faculty position at Cardiff University. Connect with Alix on Twitter, Instagram, or via her website.

Jo Chew

2017 ADM Creative Fellow

Jo Chew is an artist whose paintings explore ideas of vulnerability, loss, hopefulness, and longing. Her work has been exhibited in Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, and Sydney, and she was a finalist in the Bruny18 and the Henry Jones Art Prize. Prior to her time at ADM, Jo worked as a nanny and self-funded her work as an artist. During her ADM Fellowship, she completed two series of paintings and held a solo exhibition named ‘Numbering Stars’ at Thienny Lee Gallery. She gave her first public talk as an artist, in which she discussed the connections between her art and her faith, and she wrote her first article on this topic for Eternity magazine. Following her Fellowship, Jo went on to receive first class Honours in 2018 and in 2019 commenced PhD studies at the School of Creative Arts and Media in Hobart. Her show ‘The Wanderer, the Fool, and The Refuge’ was held in February 2019 at Despard Gallery. Connect with Jo on Instagram.

Amelia Schwarze

2017 ADM Research Fellow

Amelia Schwarze has worked for more than a decade in the public sector in analytical and management roles. During her 2017 ADM Research Fellowship, Amelia completed the majority of her first book on the topic of domestic violence in the church. She also developed this research into short courses and training resources. Since 2017, Amelia has served in a number of advisory and consulting roles in relation to domestic violence. She was invited to participate in the Australian College of Theology/Common Grace workshop aimed at developing the ACT’s strategy for equipping Christian leaders to prevent and respond to domestic violence in the church. In 2018, she presented her research at the Evangelical History Association Conference, where she was also an invited speaker on the Q&A panel alongside the conference keynotes. In 2019, Amelia published her research in the peer-reviewed journal Lucas: An Evangelical History Review.

Susy Lee

2020 ADM Summer Fellow

Susy’s eclectic career began with Honours in Computer Science, but after encountering the Way of Christ as a young adult, she enrolled at Bible College to contribute meaningfully to the Kingdom. Her career has focused on International Aid and Development and the development of children and families. Years of passion for school Scripture led her into a role at the Baptist Association as NSW and ACT Consultant for Children, Family and Schools Ministries. Here she sought to equip churches, effecting movement from an emphasis on children’s ministry to discipling families.

A Masters degree in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney let Susy explore the impacts of factors like parenting and wealth inequity on social cohesion. This led Susy into the role of NSW State Coordinator with aid and development organisation TEAR Australia, where she developed her interest in how we can raise kids who care, and how we can find contentment and sustainability by deciding we have ‘enough’.

Susy has taught Christian Education subjects at Morling Theological College, and at Australian Catholic University she lectured on human flourishing, the Common Good and advocacy. As the Advocacy Coordinator for Baptist World Aid Australia, Susy inspired, equipped and mobilised churches around the country to be active in advocacy campaigns together, speaking up to political, economic and social powers on behalf of the poor and vulnerable.

Fellowship project: ‘Raising kids who care: Investing in families for the Kingdom of God’              

Our current culture encourages gross consumerism which strains relationships, finances and even our mental health. On a large scale, this affects our Christian response to ending poverty and oppression: as our society becomes more wealthy, it is becoming less generous, less compassionate, less content and more entitled.

Children have a strong sense of justice and generosity, and giving them opportunities to respond to injustice around them is a powerful way to develop their spiritual life, and to defend them from society’s excesses. Many parents have a deep desire to help their children negotiate their culture and develop their compassion and generosity, but they often feel ill-equipped to do so.

One output of this Summer Fellowship will be a honed presentation to help churches catch Susy’s vision for family events. This will involve updating research and repurposing some of Susy’s previous presentations. The main output will be a formal publishing proposal for a resource pack that will enable churches to run a series of family events.

Rev. Dr Xiaoli Yang

2020 ADM Summer Fellow

Xiaoli has been serving in Australia and overseas as a pastor, mentor and lecturer over the last twenty years.  Her PhD offers a conversation between the Chinese soul-searching and the gospel of Jesus Christ through a unique contextual poetic lens (Leiden: Brill 2018). She has published widely for both academic and general readers. She is also a spiritual director and serves on the Executive Committee of Australian Association of Mission Studies and the Editorial Board of Australian Journal of Mission Studies.  She holds honorary research and supervisory positions at a number of Australian universities.

Fellowship project: ‘Developing Chinese Christianity: Poetry and intercultural theology’

Despite the rapid growth of Chinese Christianity around the world, there is a desperate need for a deepened and mature faith, expressed in both theological and biblical reflection and in practice. Xiaoli’s work aims to be gospel-centred, culturally relevant and missiologically driven. 

For her Summer Fellowship she will focus on two of her current projects. First, compiling and translating her bilingual poetry collection for publication as a preparation for her next monograph on poetic theology. This collection seeks to allow the in-between experience of people in a context of global dislocation to be heard in the public space, therefore creating a window of opportunity to reach out to those living in the margins.

Second, conducting some research on a book chapter 'Creation and Tian' as a part of ‘T&T Clark Companion to the Doctrine of Creation’ to be published in 2021. The chapter will help academics and students to grasp the biblical understanding of Creation and the Chinese concept of Tian (Heaven) through the creative engagement of a dialogue. It is hoped that these intercultural and interdisciplinary publications will build bridges between the East and the West, poetry and theology, and the Bible and other texts.

Dr Chelsea Gill

2020 ADM Summer Fellow

Chelsea resides on the Gold Coast and works at a university, providing high-level consultation and advice on strategic projects related to teaching and learning. As a tertiary educator for the past 10 years, she has helped many academics to translate theory into praxis, whether in business, education or event management. She loves to create opportunities that foster personal growth, transformation and restoration in secular and Christian settings and her Christian faith is the prime motivator for this.

In 2018, Chelsea received her PhD from the University of Queensland. Her research explored the restorative potential, experiences and outcomes of spiritual retreats for Christian clergy across four mainline denominations and she has published several academic journal articles. Just as people take an annual vacation, she believes there is a desperate need in the 21st century for people to have an annual Christian spiritual retreat where they can refocus and be refreshed and restored. Chelsea is passionate about reclaiming spiritual and wellness retreats to be Christ-centred and informed by evidence-based practice. She wants the retreats she designs to engage those who are spiritually searching – whether inside or outside the walls of the church – and provide a space for them to experience refreshment, restoration and transformation in Christ Jesus.

Fellowship project: ‘Designing restorative retreats that are Christ-centred and evidence-based

Chelsea’s Summer Fellowship project is to design and promote two restorative retreat programs that reach Christians and non-Christians with the proclamation and experience of the Good News of Jesus Christ in the power of God the Holy Spirit. This project is motivated by an awareness of the impact of today’s culture being so fast-paced and technology-dependent, full of constant information-overload, interruptions, responsibilities and deadlines competing for attention. A restorative retreat facilitates an intentional ceasing of all work and distractions and fosters spiritual, social, cognitive and emotional benefits.

The Summer Fellowship will enable the culmination of years of formal study, experience and observations to fuse together into the creation of two retreat packages that can be delivered in multiple contexts and places. Chelsea will design the retreats based on the best-practice principles emerging from her doctoral research which identified the activities, experiences and attributes that lead to immediate and enduring restorative outcomes. She will organise all the logistical and marketing elements related to implementing the retreat during the Fellowship. In the months following the Summer Fellowship, Chelsea plans to deliver the two retreats she designs in Queensland and New South Wales.

Dr Melinda Cooper

2019 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Melinda is an early-career researcher whose work focuses on twentieth century Australian women writers. She is currently in the final stages of completing a PhD in English at the University of Sydney, exploring the nature of Australian literary modernism through an investigation of the interwar novels of Eleanor Dark. Melinda has taught Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, and previously worked as a secondary school English teacher. Her work has been published in a number of leading Australian journals, including Australian Literary Studies, JASAL, Queensland Review, Southerly and Hecate, and she has presented her research at a variety of national and international conferences.

Project: Australian literary modernism and Eleanor Dark’s mid-century fiction

Melinda’s ADM Summer Research Fellowship will be used to complete her current research project on the interwar novels of Eleanor Dark, and to begin work on a journal article about Australian literary modernism.  In both, she aims to demonstrate how Australian women writers mediated the experiences of international modernity in the mid-century period. In particular, she is interested in how their writings reveal aspects of modernism that have often been obscured, including the relationship of modernism and modernity to settler colonialism, regionalism, liberal humanism, and the middlebrow. While Dark’s answers to ethical questions were often circumscribed by the discourses available to her in the mid-century context, and by her liberal humanist commitments, her novels nonetheless represent a woman writer striving to creatively explore issues that continue to demand our attention today.

Grace Lung

2019 ADM Summer Fellow

Grace grew up in Sydney in a large Chinese church. Since then she has loved and served various Chinese churches over the years, working in pastoral ministry with youth, students, young workers and women. Her passion is contextualising the gospel to Asian Australians and developing ethnically Asian churches in Australia. Grace studied and then worked in IT for several years before studying at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. She holds a Graduate Diploma of Divinity and Master of Arts in Christian Studies. Her Master’s project explored the identity of second-generation Chinese Australians, integrating Asian Australian studies with Paul’s theology of identity in Ephesians. She is currently completing a Certificate in Asian American Contexts at Fuller Theological Seminary. Grace is also a Research Fellow and Board of Reference member for the Centre for Asian Christianity at the Brisbane School of Theology.

 Grace has a keen interest in the intersection of ethnic identity and spiritual identity. Her journey into this area began when she discovered that a deeper understanding of hidden cultural assumptions alleviated conflicts within her ethnic church. She is looking to combine cross-cultural, racial, counselling and peacemaking disciplines to the ministry context for Asians in the West. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the Gospel Coalition Australia, Centered and Common Grace. A stay at home mum and ministry wife, Grace is married to Chris, pastor of a second generation Chinese Australian congregation, and they reside in Brisbane with their young daughter. She enjoys sharing Brisbane’s best Insta-worthy Asian food on Zomato, following Asian American/Australian news and catching up the latest East Asian pop culture.

Project: Gospel ministry for the Asian Australian context

Grace’s project is to develop accessible and contextualised gospel training materials for the Asian Australian church. This context includes not only Asian culture, but also Western culture, migration history and racialisation as expressed in the Asian American Quadrilateral, which Dr. Daniel Lee of Fuller Seminary developed. The project also explores the relationship between spiritual and ethnic identity. The aim for the training program is: (1) for Christians to articulate the gospel in a way which speaks to specific contextual situations for Asian Australians; (2) to support the identity and spiritual formation of Asian Australians; and (3) to reduce the severity of conflict within the Asian ethnic church. In addition, such training will contribute to the way Asians and Asians in the West interact with Western Christianity on the global stage.

Dr Pamela Maddock

2019 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Pamela is completing her PhD in History at the University of Sydney.  Her dissertation examines the U.S. Army’s management of venereal disease in different racial and cultural contexts between 1870 and 1920.  She is interested in how state and non-state actors approach questions of soldiers’ personal conduct. Her research interests more broadly include late 19th Century purity and temperance movements, eugenics, history of medicine, and labor history. 

With a variety of teaching and research experiences, Pamela has worked at the University of Sydney as a tutor in American History, Historiography, and History of Gender and Medicine, and African-American Urban History. Last year, she was a visiting scholar at Harvard University in the History of Science Department. This year she coordinates the American Cultures Workshop series at the U.S. Studies Centre, a fortnightly interdisciplinary meeting that discusses pre-circulated unpublished papers of scholars from the greater Asia-Pacific region. Prior to commencing the PhD project, she taught history at secondary schools. In suburban Boston, she taught at a co-ed public school, and in Australia, she taught at an all-boys academically selective high school in downtown Sydney. Her passions are both studying history and teaching history.

Project: Gender and Germs

Pamela’s larger project, “Gender and Germs: Managing the consumption of sex and alcohol in the US Army, 1870-1920”, is a book-length examination of how the U.S. Army controlled venereal disease among soldiers in places outside the U.S. It explores the attitudes of middle-class American civilian reformers and U.S. military personnel in controlling the personal conduct of men in racial, geographic, and military contexts outside of the United States. She examines the gendered assumptions informing their approaches in controlling the behavior of uniformed men elsewhere. With a concern for the historical actors and the soldiers’ consumption of sex and alcohol, she asks how such consumer patterns helped construct ideas of race and masculinity in the military, especially since acceptable standards of soldiers’ personal conduct were fiercely debated. Some understood a soldier to represent the nation while some civilian and military leaders saw the army as a laboratory in which to experiment with social reform. Her work joins the growing field of scholarship that views the army as enlisted laborers in the work of empire. 

In addition to completing specific chapters, she hopes to write a piece (intended for The Conversation) about the historical connections between sport and moral behaviour in men. She’ll look at how connections between sport or exercise and moral or upright living, especially in the lives of men, have been perpetuated over the years.

Dr Robyn Wrigley-Carr

2018 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Dr Robyn Wrigley-Carr is a permanent Senior Lecturer in Theology and Spirituality at Alphacrusis College. She is the editor of Evelyn Underhill's Prayer Book (SPCK) and author of The Spiritual Formation of Evelyn Underhill (SPCK, forthcoming 2019). Robyn has a Masters degree in Spiritual Theology from Regent College and a PhD from the University of St Andrews. During her ADM Summer Fellowship, Robyn conducted research for a new book on the lives and words of exemplary Christian women from the past, exploring connections between their devotional lives and active service.

Jo Kadlecek

2018 ADM Summer Creative Fellow

Jo has served as coordinator of women in ministries at the Anglican Church of Noosa, and before that she spent over 30 years teaching, speaking and writing for various publications, churches and Christian universities across the U.S. She has published novels, nonfiction works, and written articles for publications such as The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, North Shore Magazine, New York Post, Christianity Today, and Religion News Service. During her ADM Summer Creative Fellowship, Jo wrote her play ‘Connecting the Dots’ – an imagined conversation for the stage, exploring the lives and works of Dorothy Sayers, Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Day. Following her Summer Fellowship, in 2018 Jo co-founded Joining the Dots Theatre Company and the play she wrote during her Summer Fellowship was performed on International Women’s Day at ADM in 2019.

Dr Lyn Kidson

2018 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Dr Lyn Kidson is an ancient historian specialising in the Pastoral Epistles in the New Testament. She is a member of the Faculty of Theology at Alphacrucis College. During her ADM Summer Fellowship, Lyn wrote and submitted a paper to the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Annual Meeting in Denver, which was accepted. As a result of this paper presentation and a previous one, Lyn was invited to join the steering committee for SBL Disputed Paulines Section enabling her to further contribute in promoting scholarship in Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians and the Pastoral Epistles.

Dr Christine Poon

2018 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Dr Christine Poon is a biomedical engineer, focused on improving healthcare through technological innovation. She held a postdoctoral appointment in Singapore and her PhD from the University of Sydney in 2016 for developing an ethical research platform to improve the techniques used to culture human cells and tissues. Christine has also provided her professional opinion for Australian regulatory standards development and published in leading academic journals in her field. Christine’s research and engineering design principles – taking a biomimetic approach – are underscored by her belief that naturally occurring conditions found in the body represent the ‘gold standard’ for bioengineering. During her ADM Summer Fellowship Christine did groundwork for a long-term biomedical engineering initiative that seeks to improve and optimise the methods and materials used to store donated blood, in order to increase its shelf life and accessibility.

Dr Brooke Scriven

2018 ADM Summer Research Fellow

Dr Brooke Scriven is a primary school teacher at Wagga Wagga Christian College and an educational researcher whose work focuses on young children’s literacies and interactions. She has a PhD from Charles Sturt University, where she is also a sessional academic in the Faculty of Education. Her research has been published recently in the edited books Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction and Digital Childhoods: Technologies and Children’s Everyday Lives. During her ADM Summer Fellowship, Brooke developed a project on the social production of children’s worship in Bible lessons, exploring how children construct biblical understandings through their interaction, using verbal and bodily actions to organise their turn-taking and responses to each other’s praise. Brooke plans to publish her findings on children’s literacy practices during worship in a peer-reviewed journal, as well as to share her findings with kids' church leaders at her local church to equip and strengthen children’s ministry.