Mark Harris is Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion and Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre in Science and Religion at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.
Active in physics for many years, Professor Harris is known (with Steve Bramwell of University College London) as the discoverer of ‘spin ice,’ currently a major research area in the physics of magnetism. After ordination as an Anglican priest, and spells in university chaplaincy and cathedral ministry, he moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2012 to establish its Science and Religion programme. In 2023 he moved to Oxford to take up the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion, and to direct the Ian Ramsey Centre.
Professor Harris’s research interests include the relationship between the physical sciences (especially physics) and theology, and the impact of science on modern views of the Bible, especially in thinking on miracles and divine action. He is currently working on a critical study of the theological reception of quantum mechanics. He recently led the Theology of the Quantum World project, along with the God and the Book of Nature research network, funded by the Issachar Fund and the John Templeton Foundation, respectively. Beyond his work in the University, he also serves as President of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT), and is a past Chair of the Science and Religion Forum (SRF).
Katharina Nieswandt (PhD University of Pittsburgh) is Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal. Her recent monograph, The Good Life and the Good State (2025), develops a Neo-Aristotelian theory of government. She specializes in meta-ethics and political theory, and most of her papers treat questions at the intersection of these two areas, such as “What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties?” and “Do Early Modern Theories of Property Apply to Capitalist Economies?” Central topics for her are practical rationality (“Instrumental Rationality in the Social Sciences,” “Should Intro Ethics Make You a Better Person?”), the common good, and the philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe. She occasionally co-publishes in empirical psychology.
Mitra Sharafi is a legal historian of South Asia. She is Evjue-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School (with History and Legal Studies affiliation) and president of the American Society for Legal History.
Sharafi holds law degrees from Cambridge and Oxford (the UK equivalent of a JD and LLM) and history degrees from McGill (BA) and Princeton (PhD). Her first book, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947 won the Law and Society Association’s 2015 Hurst Prize. Her second monograph, Fear of the False: Forensic Science and the Law of Crime in Colonial South Asia, will be published with Cornell University Press’s Corpus Juris series (Open Access) in April 2026.
Sharafi has published articles on the history of abortion and species-of-origin bloodstain testing, and is completing articles on government lab experts in Indian criminal procedure and forensic handwriting analysis. Her research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, Institute for Advanced Study, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Shelby Cullom Davis Center, and Social Science Research Council. She is the recipient of campus awards for her teaching and mentoring.
Andrew Jewett is Teaching Professor at Johns Hopkins, where he will teach in the Medicine, Science and Humanities program, the Department of the History of Science and Technology, and the Department of History after finishing a comprehensive history of the institution. He previously taught for ten years at Harvard after teaching at Boston College, Yale, NYU, Vanderbilt, Georgia College, and the University of Houston. He has also held fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Cornell Society for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.