Whitley College has a long tradition of appointing faculty with research experience, usually gained through their own doctoral level study, and who have gained research active status.
Our research active faculty members supervise a range of HDR students in the following areas:
Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Christian Doctrine, Missiology, Contextual Theology, Indigenous theology, Practical theology, Pastoral theology, Christian Spirituality, Faith Development.
Supervision of our research PhD., MPhil, and Minor Theses projects is being undertaken by our Whitley College faculty, our wonderful honorary research associates, and research faculty from other Universities and College.
Professor Mark Brett
Professor of Hebrew Bible
Professor Mark Brett teaches Hebrew Bible and ethics. He was raised in Papua New Guinea, which has yielded a lifelong interest in the cultural contexts of education and biblical studies. His PhD on hermeneutical philosophy was published as Biblical Criticism in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and his subsequent research has focused on ethnicity and postcolonial studies. During 2005–2008, he also worked for an Aboriginal organization in developing new frameworks for the negotiation of native title claims within the state of Victoria. He is a member of Brunswick Baptist Church.
Professor Brett’s research interests are focused in the areas of colonialism, political theologies, intercultural studies, and the Hebrew Bible.
Mark is the former General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature and among his recent publications are Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Rev Professor René Erwich
Principal and Professor of Practical Theology
Dr René Erwich was appointed Principal of Whitley College in 2017 after working as a research professor in Practical Theology in the Netherlands for a number of years. His focus in teaching and research is always on the intersection of faith, religious practices and society. The driving motivation behind his work in preaching, teaching and writing is around creating connections and integration of the realities of today’s world with the realities of the Gospel of the Kingdom. He is highly interested in new forms of church, theology and media, human sexuality and theology and supervised learning. Dr Erwich is an ordained Baptist minister and a registered pastoral supervisor. He is married to Christa Eijer and together they have four children.
Professor Erwich’s research interests are focused in the areas of ecclesiology and lived religion, film and theology, sexuality and theology, the relationship between theology and lifestories as narrative.
Among his recent publications is ‘“Someday our gods will be friends”: The Vikings series as embodiment of religion and liquefaction of meaning’ in Journal for Religion, Film, and Media, 6, 1, 2020. 103-126.
Rev Associate Professor Jason Goroncy
Associate Professor of Christian Thought and Doctrine
Jason is an ordained minister with the Baptist Union of Victoria and the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, and teaches in the area of systematic theology at Whitley College. He previously served as a pastor in Baptist and Uniting churches, as a lecturer at the Koh Lo Traw Theological College (Thailand), as a lecturer and Dean of the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership in New Zealand, and as Chair of the Church and Society Working Group for the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
Dr Goroncy’s research interests are focused in the areas of theological anthropology, theology and the arts, theological ethics, public theology, Reformed traditions, death, P.T. Forsyth, and the doctrines of God and creation. He has most recently contributed ‘Barth on Sanctification’ in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, edited by George Hunsinger and Keith L. Johnson (Chichester, UK: Blackwell, 2020).
Rev Associate Professor Darrell Jackson
Dean of Research
Darrell grew up in the Isle of Man and was ordained to Baptist ministry in 1989. Educated at London School of Theology, the University of Birmingham and the University of Gloucestershire. His ThD addresses Baptist church membership and missiology. He has been involved in full-time theological education since 2007 with lecturing experience at Bristol Baptist College; the International Baptist Theological Seminary, Prague; Redcliffe College, UK; Tabor College, Adelaide; Morling College, Sydney; and a number of US Universities and Seminaries.
Darrell’s ministry experience includes pastoral, denominational, and ecumenical roles. Through these roles he has built considerable experience at the intersection of research, missiology, and theological education.
Associate Professor Jackson’s research interests are focused in the areas of missiology, migration and diaspora, ethnicity, identity, and nationalism, and Orthodox-Evangelical encounter.
Among his recent publications is ‘Re-placing mission: exilic options reconsidered’ in Not in Kansas anymore: Christian faith in a post-Christian world edited by Mike Frost, Darrell Jackson, and David Starling (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publications, 2020).
Dr Megan Turton
Lecturer in Hebrew Bible and Language
Megan teaches Hebrew Bible and language. Raised in country Victoria, she studied Law/Arts at Latrobe University, where her interest in the interrelationship between law, morality, justice, and the Bible first began. Her PhD on the character of biblical law, completed through the University of Sydney in 2021, has been accepted for publication by Mohr Siebeck. In addition to her role at Whitley College, Megan is the Secretary of the Fellowship for Biblical Studies, an organisation that promotes research and discussion on biblical studies and related fields in Australia and beyond.
Dr Turton’s research interests are focused in the areas of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, ancient Near Eastern history, Second Temple Judaism, law and religion, women and gender, and the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible within ancient and contemporary contexts.
Among her recent publications is “Deuteronomic Law, Deuteronomic Narrative, or Exodus Narrative? The Multivalence and Multiformity of Deuteronomy 18:15–22,” in Deuteronomy in the Making: Studies in the Production of Debarim, edited by Diana Edelman et al., BZAW 533 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021).