Beginning the New Year as we mean to go on

A message from the Executive Dean of Theology and Philosophy, Professor Richard Colledge

Those famous reputed words of the nineteenth century English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon – “Begin as you mean to go on, and go on as you began” – can easily become the stuff of new year resolution cliché if we let them. Yet there is something both inspirational and bracing about them. For they call us to a certain integrity of action: to breathe in the fresh air of a new annual adventure, to dare to take the first step, and to have the courage to persist. As 2025 lays ahead of us like a still-fresh canvas, may we begin well and continue in that spirit as we work together to do wonderful things.

Of course, beginning well also means building on the year past: celebrating what was achieved, being ready to try again where things didn’t flourish as planned, but also recognising the new beginnings that we hope will come to bloom in the year ahead. As the summer break already disappears into the rear vision mirror and Semester 1 looms, I’m most taken by the last of those categories: examples across the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy where new initiatives have begun and are set to take off in 2025.

One example relates to the possibilities for developing partnerships with universities in South East Asia. A visit late last year to Java, Indonesia (the world’s most populous island, I learned!), revealed a series of wonderful opportunities to partner with colleagues in a region right on our global doorstep. In meetings with colleagues at a range of universities – state, Catholic and Islamic – I was struck by their openness and keenness to collaborate in research, research training and education. There are many opportunities to engage across a range of areas, from inter-religious dialogue, to applied ethics, to a series of themes around human flourishing and integral human development. There are clear ways that the faculty can be of service to communities across Indonesia, providing upskilling for staff, higher degree pathways for students, and perhaps also new ventures in transnational education, especially at Masters level.

Another example is the groundwork laid last year for the revitalisation of the Core Curriculum, with a series of new units (and unit updates) that are currently winding their way through our academic governance processes. The work of building these units now in Canvas modules is major work for 2025. I’m excited about the possibilities that this revitalised curriculum can mean for our undergraduate students, and I’m also keen to investigate ways that the Core might open up conversations more broadly across our university concerning the depth and breadth of our Catholic intellectual heritage.

A final example relates to developing international research partnerships that are so crucial not only for ensuring our research maintains its global currency, but also positions the faculty to contribute strongly to ACU’s Vision 2033 research goals. Cases of individual researchers across the faculty building research collaborations internationally abound, and we look forward to many of these blossoming into larger scale – potentially funded – projects. There are also a range of large-scale projects that span the faculty: from the IRCI Biblical and Early Christian Studies “Flourishing in Early Christianity” project that involves collaboration with researchers at Harvard and Baylor universities and beyond; to the School of Theology and Xavier Centre’s “Inclusive Governance in a Synodal Church” project in collaboration with researchers from Durham University and numerous ecclesial connections; the IRCI Religion and Theology program’s “Theology of Catholicities” project that engages with staff from St Andrews, Oxford and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven; to the School of Philosophy’s Philosophy of Religion project collaborations with Boston College. Similarly strong partnerships are being developed by the faculty’s Centre for the Study of Vatican II, the Queensland Bioethics Centre, the Loyola Institute, to name just a few.

In nurturing what has been planted, may we take the time this year to enjoy the transition – where they occur – of buds to blooms.