Dr Damian Howard SJ
Email: d.howard@heythrop.ac.uk
Telephone: 020 7795 4185
Biography
Dr Damian Howard is an English Jesuit priest and a lecturer at Heythrop College since September 2010. He was born and grew up in Surrey. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the Centre Sčvres in Paris, the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, and gained his doctorate in contemporary Islamic thought from the University of Birmingham.
In addition to academic work, Dr Howard has served in a variety of Jesuit works including secondary schools (St Ignatius College, Enfield, St Aloysius College, Glasgow), a parish (Corpus Christi, Brixton), a social centre in Brussels (OCIPE – Jesuit European Office) and also in the formation of novices. He has collaborated extensively with the African Jesuit AIDS Network. He has also worked in chaplaincy in Birmingham City University and gives retreats and spiritual direction on a regular basis. He lives in Brixton, south London, in a house of Jesuit formation. In October 2010 he was invited by Pope Benedict XVI to take part in the Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East.
Current teaching
Beliefs and Practices in Christianity
Religion and Religions in the Modern World
Muslim-Christian Relations
Research interests
Dr Howard is interested in relations between Christians and Muslims. He is particularly concerned to help Christians develop a theological response to Islam and is taking part in an on-going seminar in partnership with Campion Hall, Oxford, Georgetown University. He has a long-standing interest in questions of the confrontation between modernity and religions, political philosophy, Ignatian spirituality and Jesuit mission.
