Dafydd Daniel

Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel is Lecturer in Divinity, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Before joining St Andrews in September 2022, Dafydd was the McDonald Lecturer in Christian Ethics (2017-2022) and Coordinator of Applied Theology (2021-2022) at the University of Oxford. He read for a BA in Theology and Religious studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, before completing a Masters in Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Yale, where he was a Marquand Scholar. After completing his DPhil in Theology at Oxford, Dafydd undertook a PGCE in Religious Education, also at Oxford.

Dafydd is a BBC and AHRC New Generation Thinker. His BBC radio documentaries include: Bob Dylan and the Ferry; Sir Isaac Newton and the Philosophers' Stone; Why the killing of 7 protesters in 1768 was a “massacre”; and, Where do human rights come from? (which was featured in the Penguin Audio Book Instant Expert: 100 of the best ideas from New Generation Thinkers).

Dafydd has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze (to discuss rights and duties); at the English National Opera (to discuss Oscar Wilde’s Salome); at the Scottish Land Commission (to discuss models for landownership); and in Series 3, Episode 4 of National Geographic’s The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (to discuss the practice of sin-eating). He has also contributed regularly to BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, on a range of topics, including: John Henry Newman; George Eliot; radical deism; individualism and community; and nature writing (where Dafydd’s contribution, on the 18^th century ‘parson-naturalist’, Gilbert White, was featured as choice in the Radio Times).

An amateur writer of fiction, Dafydd was a Bridport Prizewinner in 2020, for his short story, ‘What The Deal Is’, and one of six authors shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2021.

Theological and philosophical ethics; historical theology and the history of Western philosophy; philosophical theology; intellectual and church history (with a particular focus on early modern Britain)

Dafydd’s research is interested principally in exploring how, and demonstrating that, we cannot understand contemporary ethical and political debates (both practical and theoretical) without understanding their historical context – and that we cannot understand their historical context without reference to theology.

DI1001 – God and the World: Introducing Theology

DI1014 – The Good Life: Christian Ethics and Human Flourishing

DI2010 – Philosophical Theology

DI4634 – God and Morality: Faith and Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment

DI4835 – Christianity and Politics: Patriotism, Republicanism, and Cosmopolitanism

DI5539 – The Good Life and the Good Death: Theological and Practical Ethics