Prof. Peter Tyler

Peter Tyler is Senior Lecturer and Programme Director of Pastoral Theology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, UK. Previous publications include The Return to the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical Tradition (Continuum, 2011) and The Pursuit of the Soul: Psychoanalysis, Soul-making and the Christian Tradition (T & T Clark, 2016).

Fr. Matt Blake, OCD

Fr Matthew Blake is a Carmelite priest. Originally from Ireland, he has lived and worked  in the UK for more than thirty years. His ministry has mainly involved retreat direction, for which he is well-known in the UK, and he has also worked in many different parishes.

Dr. Mark Gerard Murphy

Mark Gerard Murphy is an editor for the political journal and blog Taiwan Insight and a Lecturer at St Mary’s University, Scotland, Gillis Centre, convening courses on ethics, philosophy, and mystical theology/spirituality. His research interests include the relationship between psychoanalysis and mystical theology. He has published a forthcoming book on John of the Cross and Lacan with Palgrave in the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. 

Dr. Mary Stevens

Mary Stevens is an Honorary Research Fellow in Divinity at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Her research interests include the theological and philosophical anthropology of Karol Wojtyla / Pope John Paul II and his soteriology, referencing the deep current of Sanjuanist spirituality in his work. In particular she is interested in how these are and can be lived out in different aspects of social life from politics to the cloister.

Dr. Heather Ward, OCDS

Heather Ward, OCDS is a Carmelite with many years of experience in spiritual guidance. She holds a PhD from the University of Nottingham and an M.Ed. from Maryvale Institute, Birmingham. She teaches a number of modules on Carmelite spirituality for the Carmelite Institute of Britain and Ireland (CIBI) and has had many articles published. She is a tutor for our Carmelite Prayer Guides Course (2018-2019).

Deacon Tom Berrie

Tom is a deacon of the Nottingham Diocese.  He has a BA in Politics and Economics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, a BA in Divinity and MA in Catholic Theology from Maryvale.  He is married to Janet has two grown up children and their spouses and two grandsons.  He lives in Burbage next to Hinckley in Leicestershire.

Tim Burton, OCDS

Tim Burton has a BA in Philosophy from London University, where he studied the subject from an Anglo-American analytic perspective, and an MA in the same subject from Sussex University where he studied nineteenth century European thinkers. He then pursued a career in educational publishing as a specialist in the development of distance learning resources. Now retired, Tim continues to read and reflect on philosophy – as one interest among many others –  and particularly enjoys reading works by 20th century thinkers including Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch. 

Pauline Warner

Reverend Pauline Warner is a Methodist minister who has served in various posts in Bradford and Coventry in both church ministry and chaplaincy of various kinds.  She has served on the Methodist-Roman Catholic commission. Almost retired now, she still works a few hours as chaplain to Coventry University and was instrumental in their opening of a campus in Wroclaw, St. Edith Stein’s birthplace in Poland which has since excited her interest in the saint.

Paper Concern

She is arranging a pilgrimage to the city in the Autumn of 2025. Her lecture introduces the venues and inspirations for the Tour on Edith’s search for meaning.  She is also a member of the Redditch Carmelite prayer group.

Wanyoung Kim-Murphy

Wanyoung Kim is a philosopher, translator, and psychotherapist. She attained her PhD in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from The European Graduate School and her Masters of Science in Psychology from Capella University. She has translated works in French by Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Maurice Blanchot. Her forthcoming translation with Saint Mary’s University Press is Saint John of the Cross and the Problem of Mystical Experience by Jean Baruzi.

Paper Concern

I will be giving a presentation on Jean Baruzi’s analysis of Saint John of the Cross’s Mystical Way, from the stages of the initial negation to the theopathic state where the soul of the spiritual person proceeds through the Night of Sense and the Night of the Spirit and everything that is not God is annihilated. How is true contemplation distinguished from meditation, and what does it mean to negate sensory apperceptions?