Areas of expertise
The visual art, poetry and writings of David Jones; creativity and spiritual practice; metaphysics of creation; ecology, literature and theology.
Courses taught
Theology and the Visual Arts; Ecology and Poetry
Bio
Powell has been teaching with Notre Dame London since the Fall of 2021 and also serves as the Director of Research at the Margaret Beaufort Institute, Cambridge.
She received her PhD from the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge in 2016 in philosophical theology. Her dissertation explored questions of theological genre and method by way of a close engagement with selected artworks by the twentieth-century artist and poet, David Jones. Following graduation, she held a two-year position at the University of Cambridge as Teaching Associate in Christian Theology, lecturing on figures such as Augustine and Julian of Norwich. She then became the La Retraite Fellow in Theology and Spirituality at the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University and served as the academic lead for the Catholicism, Literature, and the Arts III: Liturgy and Place conference, co-hosted by Notre Dame London and Centre for Catholic Studies in July 2022. She continued her work with Durham University the following year as Research Associate for the Templeton-funded project, ‘Phenomenology of Theological Practice: Modelling Enquiry and Poiesis’.
Select Works
David Jones and the Craft of Theology: Becoming Beauty. New Studies in English Theology. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2020.
‘Paradoxes of Enclosure: David Jones’s Nativity’: (Part I or III). In Commonweal Magazine. Issue September 2020.
‘Do not worry’: A Theological and Visual Commentary on Matthew 6/Luke 12:22-34. Visual Commentary on Scripture: Encountering the Bible in the Company of Artists. https://thevcs.org/seek-ye-first-kingdom-god/do-not-worry
‘The Quest for Sacrament in David Jones’s Poem, “A, a, a, DOMINE DEUS”’. Special Issue: David Jones: Towards a Theology of History. Religion and Literature. 49, no. 1 (Summer 2018).