Andrew Paul Davison
The Rev. Professor Andrew Paul Davison is Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Science, University of Cambridge, and Fellow in Theology and Dean of Chapel, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He has held his position at the University of Cambridge since 2014. Before he moved into theology, he was a scientist (a chemist, then a biochemist), going on to teach Christian doctrine at Oxford and Cambridge. He holds undergraduate degrees and doctorates in both natural science and theology. He is a fellow of Corpus Christi College, where is he also Dean of Chapel, having been ordained in 2003.
Since 2021, Andrew has been collaborating with a group of scientists from the University and beyond on the origins of life. The resulting Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe was established in 2022. An ongoing collaboration on climate change with Professor Julian Allwood in the University’s Faculty of Engineering saw him appointed as a fellow of the UK FIRES initiative in 2022. From 2015-21, he held the position of Canon Philosopher at St Albans Cathedral, the first such position in the Church of England. He is now a canon emeritus. He served for nine years on the English and Welsh Anglican – Roman Catholic dialogue, and on the Church of England’s commission on marriage and sexuality.
Professor Davison works at the intersection of theology, science and philosophy. His recent work has addressed astrobiology, inter-species cooperation (or mutualism) in biology, and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. His current work has turned from putative intelligent life elsewhere in the universe to the origins of life, alongside a series of papers bringing the tools of scholastic philosophy to bear on topics in artificial intelligence or machine learning. He is also know for his work on Thomism and Christian Platonism (not least in relation to natural science and the environment). His highly acclaimed monograph Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press, 2019) explores the idea of participation — sharing in, or sharing from — as a structuring principle in Christian thought that is both Biblical and Platonic.
In the 2016-17 academic year, he was a fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, on a NASA-sponsored programme to consider the implications for human society and self-understanding of life elsewhere in the universe. This led to his monograph Astrobiology and Christian Doctrine: Exploring the Implications of Life in the Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2023).