Catherine Pickstock


Catherine Pickstock is an English philosophical theologian and academic. Since 2018, she has been Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow and tutor of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She was previously Professor of Metaphysics and Poetics.

Early life and education

Pickstock was born in 1970 in New York City, United States. She was educated at Channing School, an all-girls independent school in Highgate, London, England. Having won a choral scholarship, she studied English literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1991. She then moved to philosophical theology and undertook postgraduate studies in this topic at the University of Cambridge. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1996 with a thesis titled The Sacred Polis: Language, Death and Liturgy. Her doctoral supervisor was John Milbank.

Academic career

From 1995 to 1998, Pickstock was a research fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. From 1998 to 2000, she held a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. In 2000, she was appointed a lecturer in philosophy of religion in the Faculty of Divinity. In 2006, she was promoted to reader in philosophy and theology. From 2016 to 2017, she is also a Mellon Teaching Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. In 2015, she was made Professor of Metaphysics and Poetics.
In March 2018, it was announced that Pickstock would be the next Norris–Hulse Professor of Divinity. She took up the chair on 1 October 2018.

Views and research

Pickstock is known for her contributions to the radical orthodoxy movement, the foundations of which are often credited to her mentor John Milbank. Her research and writing are based in philosophical theology, Platonic philosophy, and medieval theology. In particular, she has applied linguistics to theories of religious language, analogy, and liturgy, looked at postmodern philosophy in relation to the reinterpretation of pre-modern theology and undertaken a reconsideration of the Platonic tradition in interaction with biblically-based faiths, especially rituals invoking divine intervention and understandings of the soul.

Selected works

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