Academic Staff

Department of Scripture

Dr Kieran O’Mahony OSA HDipEd, STB, STL, LSS, PhD, head of the Department of Scripture is an Augustinian friar and studied in Rome (Pontifical Biblical Institute), Jerusalem (Ecole Biblique) and Dublin (Trinity College). He has been teaching biblical studies since 1990. His main research interest is St Paul.
Publications

Department of Systematic Theology and History

Dr Declan Marmion is Senior Lecturer and Head of Dept. of Systematic Theology and History. He studied theology at Milltown Institute, Heythrop College, (University of London), Passau University, Germany, and at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium where he gained his doctorate in theology 1997. He has taught at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the Milltown Institute since 1997. He has also supervised theses at Masters, Licentiate and Doctoral Level. International Conferences for which he has been responsible include: the “Rahner/Lonergan Centenary Conference” (2004) and the “Trinity and Salvation” Conference (2008). Administratively, he has either led or served on the following committees: Library Committee, Academic Strategy Group, Quality Assurance Committee, and ongoing staff development. Currently, he is Head of the Department of Systematic Theology and History and serves on the Academic Council and the Governing Authority of the Institute. His publications include: The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner (CUP, 2004), Christian Identity in a Postmodern Age: Celebrating the Legacies of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan (Veritas, 2005), Theology in the Making – Biography, Contexts, Methods (co-edited with Gesa Thiessen, Veritas, 2005) and A Spirituality of Everyday Faith – A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl Rahner (Peeters/Eerdmans, 1998). Articles in the area of systematic theology, spirituality, contemporary faith and culture have appeared in Theological Studies, Louvain Studies, and Irish Theological Quarterly.
He is a member of The Irish Theological Association, The Catholic Theological Society of America, The Karl Rahner Society (US) and The American Academy of Religion. Outside the Institute he serves as External Examiner in the MA in Christian Spirituality Programme, Dept. of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Limerick and External Examiner in the Undergraduate Theology Programme, Faculty of Theology, Pontifical University of Maynooth. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of the Irish Theological Quarterly.
Publications

Dr Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen studied at Tübingen University, the Irish School of Ecumenics (Trinity College) and at Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, Dublin. She has taught at Milltown Institute, Trinity College, Kimmage Mission Institute and All Hallows College in Dublin. She has conducted research in systematic theology with a specialization in theological aesthetics/theology and the arts and ecclesiology. She supervises MA and PhD theses and has taught courses such as Introduction to Theology, Ecumenism, Philosophy in Theology (Faith and Reason), Themes in Twentieth Century German Theology, Theological Aesthetics, Philosophical Aesthetics, Religion and Art, German for Academics.
Her doctorate, completed in 1998 at Milltown Institute, was published as Theology and Modern Irish Art (Columba, 1999). In 2004 Theological Aesthetics – A Reader followed and was simultaneously published in Britain and in the United States by SCM and Eerdmans. As the first Reader in the field, it continues to be influential in shaping the ever expanding and interdisciplinary area of theological aesthetics. Thiessen’s publications have lead to invitations to speak at international conferences including, among others, Copenhagen, Innsbruck, Cambridge, Leuven, and Yale. A member of the International Ecclesiological Investigations Research Network and of the Societas Oecumenica, she has engaged in research and has published articles in the area of contemporary ecumenical ecclesiology.
Gesa Thiessen is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Wales, Lampeter. From 2003 to 2006 she was Honorary Reader in Theology at Milltown Institute. Currently she is a member of the Academic Council of Milltown Institute. She is also Reviews Editor of Milltown Studies. Between 1992 and 2008 she was awarded numerous study and research grants and residencies from Milltown Institute, the Centre for Ecumenical Research at KU Leuven, St Deiniol’s Residential Library (Wales), the Heinrich Böll Cottage (Achill Island, Ireland), and the Tyrone Guthrie International Artists’ Centre at Annamaghkerrig, Ireland.
Publications

Department of Spirituality

Dr. Denis Robinson CSSp, Head of Department, worked as a missionary priest in Ghana, West Africa from 1980 to 1984 and later taught at the Institute of Formative Spirituality at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (1988-1996) and in Holy Ghost Preparatory School, Philadelphia (1996-1999). Returning to Ireland in 2000, he was appointed Academic Dean at the Kimmage Mission Institute. He is currently the Programme Director for the BA (honours) in Theology, Spirituality and Pastoral Ministry. His academic interests include; Prayer; the Mystics; Spiritual Growth; Human Development; Spirituality of the Sacraments, and the Spirituality of Care.

Dr Bernadette Flanagan has held diverse academic leadership roles in the Milltown Institute, including the role of Academic President in 2007. As Head of Postgraduate Studies she led the introduction of qualitative research approaches in research training for doctoral students and in staff development seminars. Through her work concepts such as the reflective practitioner, critical ethnography, heuristic investigation, participatory research and theological reflection have become the vernacular of the practical theology research in Milltown Institute. In the research field, no major theological engagement with the growing phenomenon of urbanisaiton in Ireland had happened prior to her doctoral
research work in the Liberties area of Dublin’s inner city. During her doctoral work she spent time in the Urban Theology Centre in Sheffield and with members of the Anglican Urban Priorites Team in London. While influenced by these initiatives, she eventually produced an original grid for reading religious sensibility in the urban landscape. This grid has brought her many invitations to work with urban theologians across Europe – London, Utrecht, Leuven, Budapest, Oslo, Nijmegen. Subsequent to being appointed director of the graduate programme in spirituality in Milltown Institute in 1999, Dr Flanagan set about constructing several new programmes within the methodological framework of this discipline. One keynote event for which she was responsible was organizing and hosting the first European Conference for the Academic Study of Spirituality (2004). She has also been seeking ways of moving
forward a dialogue between religion and health. This work has been informed by an internship undertaken at Duke University in 2005 with Professor Harold Koenig.
Publications

Geraldine Holton is a lecturer in the Department of Spirituality and Director of Supervisory Practice at Milltown Institute. She has many years experience in Adult Education developing and delivering training programmes in Supervision, Counselling, Spiritual Guidance. She facilitates retreat work in Ireland and the United States. Geraldine is co founder and co director of An Croí, a centre for Personal and Spiritual enrichment providing counselling, supervision and spiritual guidance and adult education programmes. She is also a chairperson of the Supervisors Association of Ireland SAI and a founding member and vice chair of the All Ireland Spiritual Guidance Association of Ireland ASIGA. She is currently a Doctorate in Psychotherapy candidate researching Supervisory Practice.

Dr. David Kelly is an Augustinian who has worked in parish ministry in California, where he was associate pastor at the parish of St. Pius V, Buena Park (1978-1981). Returning to Ireland he served on the teaching staff of Good Counsel College, New Ross from 1981-1983 and from 1984-1993. Appointed to Dublin, he completed postgraduate studies in Christian Spirituality at the Milltown Institute (Diploma in 1994 and MA in 1995), receiving his PhD in 2003. He has served on the academic staff of the Milltown Institute since 1998. His teaching and research interests include the spirituality of Augustine and other patristic writers and Irish/Celtic Spirituality. He has worked with the Priory Institute in Tallaght in their Distance Learning modules in Spirituality and has lectured in Augustinian Spirituality at the Franciscan International Study Centre at Canterbury. He has also been involved in retreat work since 1983, to religious communities as well to lay groups, in Ireland, Northern Ireland and England. He is a founder member of AISGA (All-Ireland Spiritual Guidance Association). He became director of postgraduate programmes in Christian Spirituality in 2006.
Publications

Dr Michael O’Sullivan, SJ, is an elected member of the Governing Board of the International Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and of the Steering Committee of the Christian Spirituality Study Group of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). A member of staff at the Milltown Institute since 1986, he is currently Director of the Higher Diploma and MA programmes in Applied Christian Spirituality, and an elected staff member on the Academic Council.  He has lectured to students in adult education, undergraduate, and postgraduate (HDip, MA, STL, DMin and PhD) programmes in the Institute, and played a leading role in curriculum development, the review of new programmes, and the training of MA students to carry out research projects. He lectured in sociology in what is now the National College of Ireland in 1975-76 and worked as a researcher with the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace in 1976-77.  He chaired and was co-organiser of the first conference in Ireland on Liberation theology in 1976, and edited the published conference proceedings. He was an Irish delegate to the International Conference for Development Action in Utrect, 1977 and a missionary in Chile during the Pinochet military dictatorship.  He did postgraduate studies in liberation and feminist theologies in Regis College and the University of Toronto, and has been a visiting lecturer in these theologies in England, Canada, the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia, as well as in Kimmage Mission Institute, Dublin, and UCD.  His PhD dissertation, which he wrote in Ireland, explored “‘Male’ violence against women, and salvation in Jesus Christ” drawing on the functional specialties ‘foundations,’ ‘systematics,’ and ‘communications’ in method in theology according to Bernard Lonergan.  He has been a regular contributor in the media in his areas of expertise.
Publications  

Department of Moral Theology and Canon Law

Dr. Elizabeth Cotter IBVM joined the Staff of Milltown Institute in 2006. She is a Loreto sister who worked as School Principal in Loreto Abbey Dalkey and St. Stephen’s Green prior to undertaking JCD and PhD studies in Canon Law in Saint Paul University, Ottawa 2001-2006. She contributed articles to works on Religious Education, the Catholic school and Chaplaincy in which she has a particular interest. Her Doctoral thesis concerned questions of authority in institutes of consecrated life and will be published as The General Chapter in autumn 2008. Other articles include “C. 631 and the Juridic Act” and “Canon Law in the Service of the Mission of the Church.” She was appointed Vicar for Religious of the Archdiocese of Dublin in 2006 which enables her to give practical canonical assistance to the religious of the Archdiocese of Dublin.
Publications

Dr. Maria Duffy is programme director of the BA degree in Social Justice and Christian Ethics at the Milltown Institute. She also teaches social ethics and just war theory on Milltown’s MA programmes. Formerly involved in corporate public relations(holding a Higher Diploma in Communications Management from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia), Maria went on to study theology at Maynooth, followed by a Master's in Ethics from Louvain before completing her Doctorate at Maynooth. She then did further studies in human rights law at NUI Galway.
Publications

Dr Suzanne Mulligan, Mth, PhD, Lecturer in Moral Theology. Suzanne studied at the Pontifical University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare where she received her doctorate in 2004. Research interests include the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Developing World, Catholic Social Teaching, and Fundamental Moral Theology.
Publications

Department of Mission Theology & Cultures

Dr Patrick Claffey svd, MA, PhD was a missionary in West Africa 1977-2002 involved in language research and translation, rural development and diocesan pastoral planning. A graduate of SOAS, University of London, his thesis examined the public role of Christian Churches in Danxomé-Benin. Lectures on social and political issues in religion at Milltown Institute, and is also Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics, St. Andrews University, Scotland. His research interests include the social phenomenon of secularisation, the public role of faith groups and the socio-political development of the EU. Among his publications are ‘Going back to Doolin: the Search for an Irish and Catholic’ in E Maher et al (eds.) Catholic Identity in the Irish Context, Columba, 2006; ‘Changing configurations: Religion in Europe’, in H. Bettscheider (Ed) Mission in Europe, Nettertal: Steyler Verlag, 2006; “‘Clash of Ignorance’ or ‘Clash of Civilisation’: Edward Said’s Critique of Bernard Lewis and Samuel P. Huntington,” Bulletin of Ecumenical Theology (Nigeria) 17, 2005; and articles in Anthropos, Verbum (Germany), Spiritus (Paris). Looking for a Breakthrough: The socio-political role of Christian Churches in Danxomé Benin was published by Leiden: Brill in 2006.