Three new honorary doctors at the Faculty of Theology

Lori G. Beaman is Professor of Religious Diversity and Social Change at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is also international adviser for the research programme The Impact of Religion: Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy (2008–2018) at the Uppsala Religion and Society Research Centre, Uppsala University. In 2017 she received the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s insight award for her contributions. With the term “deep equality” as a starting point, Professor Beaman discusses how religious and cultural diversity can contribute to a fair, equal and sustainable society. Her research on how globalisation, migration and political values challenge and change societies with a long history of Christian dominance has great relevance to current research in religious studies, law and social sciences at Uppsala University.

Sidnie White Crawford, Willa Cather Professor of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is specialised on the Dead Sea Scrolls and has published several critical editions of manuscripts from Qumran. Professor Crawford researches a broad research field surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and her research includes Jewish interpretations of authoritative texts, the textual development of the Pentateuch, scribal traditions, and women. As the chair of the board of trustees of W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research Jerusalem she is also engaged in archaeological matters.

Elaine Scarry is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. She gained international attention for her first book, The Body in Pain (1985), where she presented new theory of injury and healing within a broad field, from torture and war to human creativity. She demonstrated the same level of theoretical boldness and clear argumentation in her eight subsequent books (including On Beauty an Being Just), in essays and lecture series. Magazines Foreign Policy and Prospect have hailed Scarry as one of the most important contemporary voices for her defence of humanist values and democracy. In her study Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom (2014), Scarry criticised a system where, as she notes, leaders of the nuclear-weapons states have very extensive powers.

The Conferment Ceremony will be held in the University Main Building on 26 January 2018.