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History of the Conference - Dr Maithrie White

Transforming the Mind – The National Christian Postgrad Conference – was an initiative that originated in the University of Nottingham in 2003, and is an independent, self-funding venture.

The vision for a postgraduate conference emerged during my doctoral studies in the University of Nottingham. It arose out of the realisation that a celebration of academic pursuit is a vital aspect of our worship as Christian academics. The earth, and the universe, is indeed the Lord's and the fulness thereof! The university, however flawed, is a place where truth is pursued and our world, in all its diverse expressions, is investigated. However distorted some of this pursuit might be, it acknowledges the possibility of some degree of understanding the world and universe. As Christians, we can celebrate this human impulse to discover the nature of our world and our common humanity. The conference also emerged out of a certain dissatisfaction at the divide between faith and academic life in Christian postgraduates' lives, and a general absence of respected Christian thinking or voices in our universities and the academic world.

In a practical sense, the conference is also, indirectly, the outcome of the setting up of the GCF (Graduate Christian Fellowship) of Nottingham - a venture initiated by Debbie Dickson (then International Chaplain) and Rev. Ian Tarrant (then Senior Anglican Chaplain), together with a few international christian postgraduates - Alan Dennis (Ghana), Jennifer Mbabazi (Uganda) Dave Sinclair (Australia) and myself (Sri Lanka).

In 2002, I began to discuss the possibility of a National Christian postgraduate conference with Debbie Dickson. This led to the forming of a core committee consisting of the two chaplains - Ian and Debbie, a Nottingham academic – Dr Mike Clifford, an American postdoc – Dr Aaron Romanowsky, a Singaporean postgraduate - Chye Foong Yong, and myself. The conference Vision statement (as well as its title) was drawn up after much deliberation by Dr Nishan deMel -  then a postgraduate in Oxford, Debbie Dickson, and myself. The outcome was the first conference in June 2003, carrying the theme Transforming the Mind.  

The financial backing for the first two conferences came from The Veritas Forum, Harvard. Dr Aaron Romanowsky and Dr Nishan deMel, both Harvard graduates who knew Kelly Monroe (the pioneer of Veritas), organised a meeting between Kelly and ourselves to discuss possible support and funding for the conference. The vision of Veritas was similar in its desire for holistic engagement with academic life and the world, and so Kelly kindly agreed to talk to Veritas about supporting the conference financially for its first two years. Kelly attended the first two conferences. However, subsequently the conference has been funded by small donations and the conference fees, a decision based on the fact that the UK should take responsibility for the support of such a ministry.
 
The conference committee, in its first two years had representation and input from Oxford (including Joe Martin and Nishan de Mel who had restarted the Oxford Graduate Christian Union) and Cambridge (including Ard Louis who was involved with postgrads). Subsequently, a committee of postgraduates, postdocs, chaplains and academics of the University of Nottingham planned and coordinated the conference until a national committee emerged. The first conference in 2003 was chaired by myself, 2004 by Dr Jennifer Siggers (then a postdoc in Nottingham), 2005 - 2007 by Dr Mike Clifford, and from 2008 once again by myself.
 
The planning committee now consists of academics from across the UK. To strengthen and safeguard the long term vision of the conference, a formal organisational structure including a board of Trustees or Council of Reference is now being drawn up.
 
Dr Maithrie White