In Conversation with Christopher Southgate and Michael Winter

Sunday 13 October, 6:30pm with optional refreshments served from 6pm

Tilling and Keeping the Garden of Earth: The human vocation in the ecological crisis

Christopher Southgate trained originally as a research biochemist, and has since been a house-husband, a bookseller, a published poet, and a lay chaplain in university and mental health settings. For sixteen years he helped to train candidates for ministry in the South-West, and since 1993 he has taught on the science-religion debate at the University of Exeter. He is now Professor of Christian Theodicy at the University, specialising in ecotheology and also the poetry of T.S. Eliot.

His theological books include The Groaning of Creation (WJK) and Theology in a Suffering World (CUP), and his most recent poetry collections are Losing Ithaca (Shoestring) and Rain falling by the River (Canterbury Press).

Michael Winter took a degree in Rural Environmental Studies at Wye College (London University) in the 1970s, then worked on farms in Hampshire and Devon before embarking on a PhD in Rural Sociology and an academic career. He currently holds the Glanely Chair in Agricultural Change at the University of Exeter. He chairs the Devon Local Nature Partnership and was until April 2023 a board member of Natural England. His co-authored books include The Changing World of Farming in Brexit UK (Routledge), The Real Agricultural Revolution (Boydell) and The Land between the Moors (Beaford). He is a lay Canon of Exeter Cathedral and has been a licensed lay minister in west Devon for over thirty years.

All are welcome to join us for this event.