Dr Marika Rose - University of Winchester

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Biography

Marika Rose is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophical Theology at the University of Winchester, where she has been a member of the Department of Theology, Religion & Philosophy since 2019. Prior to this, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the same department from 2016 to 2019 and was a Research Fellow at the CODEC Research Centre at St John’s College, Durham University from 2014 to 2016.

Marika earned her PhD in Theology from Durham University in 2014, following an MA with Distinction in Christian Theology from Durham in 2009, and a BA (Hons) in Theology & Religious Studies from St John’s College, Cambridge University, in 2005.

Her scholarly work has been recognized with several grants and fellowships, including the a Fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg (2024-25), the Combe Trust Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh (2024-2025) and the Dorothy Foer Huck Research Award from Penn State University (2022-2023). She was named an Emerging Scholar in the Religion and Its Publics Project at the University of Virginia in 2018 and held a Research Fellowship in Digital Theology funded by The Jerusalem Trust at Durham University from 2014 to 2016. Additionally, she received a Doctoral Studentship Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK (2010-2013).

Areas of expertise

Continental philosophy of religion and systematic theology
Slavoj Žižek
Negative Theology
Angels and Cyborgs

Publications

Books

Theology for the End of the World (SCM Press, 2023).
A Theology of Failure: Žižek Against Christian Innocence (Fordham University Press, 2019).

Book chapters

‘Angels’ in The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Film, edited by Gerard Loughlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press. Submitted, due for publication in 2025).
‘The Monstrosity of Christ’ and ‘Milbank’ in Žižek-Handbuch, edited by Dominik Finkelde (Stuttgart: J B Metzler, forthcoming 2025).
‘Love Your Enemy: Theology, Identity and Antagonism’ in Dissenting Church: Exploring the Theological Power of Conflict and Disagreement, edited by Judith Gruber, Michael Schüßler and Ryszard Bobrowicz (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024).
'Slavoj Žižek' in Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theologies, edited by Christopher D Rodkey and Jordan E Miller (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), 479-295.
‘Not peace but a sword: Dionysius, Žižek and the question of ancestry’ in Mystical Theology and Continental Philosophy: Interchange in the Wake of God (Contemporary Theological Explorations in Christian Mysticism), edited by Simon Podmore, Duane Williams and David Lewin (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming 2017).
2017. ‘For Our Sins: Christianity, Complicity and the Racialized Construction of Innocence’ in Exploring Complicity: Concepts, Cases and Critique, edited by Robin Dunford, Afxentis Afxentiou and Michael Neu (London: Rowman and Littlefield), 53-64.

Journal articles

2019. 'Holy Mothers of God: sex work, inheritance, and the women of Jesus' genealogy' in Theology and Sexuality 25.1-2 (2019), 1-20.
2019. With Anthony Paul Smith. 'Hexing the Discipline: Against the Reproduction of Continental Philosophy of Religion' in Palgrave Communications 5.2 (2019), 1-10.
2017. ‘Machines of loving grace: angels, cyborgs, and the liberation of work’. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 16.2 (2017), 1-20.
2016. ‘“It's Not the Money but the Love of Money That Is the Root of All Evil”: Social Subjection, Machinic Enslavement and the Limits of Anglican Social Theology’. Religions 7.103, 1-12.
2016. ‘Editorial: Radical Theologies: Why Philosophers Can’t Leave Christianity Alone’. Modern Believing 57.3, 221-227.
2016. ‘The Christian Legacy is Incomplete: For and Against Žižek’. Modern Believing,57.3, 267-279.
2014. ‘The mystical and the material: Slavoj Žižek and the French reception of mysticism’. Sophia 53.2, 231-240.
2014. ‘This Body of Death: A Response to Tina Beattie’s “Theology after Postmodernity”’. Syndicate 1.4 , 171-175.
2013. ‘The body and ethics in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae’. New Blackfriars 94.1053, 540-551.
2013. ‘Patristics after Foucault: Genealogy, History and the Question of Justice’. Studia Patristica 62.10 , 115-120.
2011. ‘The Stone that the Builders Rejected: Work, Empire and the Two Faces of the Bible’. Postscripts 7.3 , 305-310.

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Research interests

Marika's interdisciplinary work draws apparently ‘abstract’ philosophical and theological concepts into conversation with more ‘material’ ethical questions relating to race, gender, and sexuality, technology studies, postcolonial thought and political theory. Her work has two key strands: seeking to confront the entanglement of Christian theology with histories of violence; and showing how the complex legacy of Christianity continues to shape secular life and politics. Her recent book, Theology for the End of the World (SCM Press, 2023) is aimed at a popular audience and explores the historical entanglements of Christian doctrine with the changing organisation of families, money, race, work, and freedom. Her first book, A Theology of Failure (Fordham University Press, 2019), drew on the work of Slavoj Žižek to suggest a materialist account of Christian identity as ‘failure’. Her current project focuses on the political theology of the angel, both a figures for the transformation of human life by technology and systems of government, and an index of the shifting relationship of religion, gender, and politics.

Supervision of research students

Marika is available for research supervision in the following areas: continental philosophy of religion, political theology, systematic theology, mystical theology, and Slavoj Žižek.

Funding Awards and Professional Membership

Funding awards

Combe Trust Fellowship, University of Edinburgh, 2024-25.
Fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS), Heidelberg, 2024-25.
Dorothy Foer Huck Research Award, Penn State University, 2022-23.
Emerging scholar, Religion and Its Publics project, University of Virginia, 2018.
R Revd Canon Dr Stewart Lawton Memorial Scholarship, Gladstone’s Library, 2017.
Research Fellowship in Digital Theology, funded by the Jerusalem Trust, CODEC Research Centre for Digital Theology, St John's College, Durham University, 2014-2016.
Doctoral Studentship Award, AHRC 2010-2013.
Pastoral Review Bursary in Catholic Theology/Applied Theology, 2009-2010

Professional memberships

American Academy of Religion
Society for the Study of Theology
Fellow of The Higher Education Academy