Post by St Edmund's College, University of Cambridge

St Edmund’s College is pleased to announce that Dr Alexander Daniel van Dijk has been formally elected as the inaugural 2026 John Henry Newman Junior Research Fellow. His three‑year Fellowship will commence on 1 October 2026. This prestigious Fellowship is made possible by the generous bequest of the late Rev Dr Ian Ker (1942–2022), the preeminent scholar of the life and thought of St John Henry Newman. The Fellowship stands as a testament to Dr Ker’s enduring legacy and his commitment to fostering the Catholic intellectual tradition within higher education. Dr van Dijk is an historian of science whose research and teaching focuses on the early modern and modern intersections of scientific and religious knowledges. Spanning from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, his research provides novel perspectives on the history of empiricism, narratives of disenchantment, the religious construction of economic value, and scriptural hermeneutics. He defended his PhD at the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science in November 2025, while already holding the Parker Library Early-Career Research Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he worked on the mathematical Arabism of William Bedwell (1561-1632), vicar of Tottenham. He previously completed the MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, and read History at UCL as an undergraduate. During his Fellowship, Dr van Dijk will investigate St John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and his engagement with the Victorian sciences. Like many clerics of his era, Newman read widely across emerging scientific disciplines, and this intellectual breadth shaped his reflections on Christianity and its place within the modern world. Dr Van Dijk’s project will examine Newman’s reading in geology, natural history, psychology, anthropology and cosmology, tracing how these encounters informed key Newmanian concepts such as the development of ideas, the illative sense, the idea of a university, and his homiletic practice. The project also aims to use Newman’s relationship with the Victorian sciences as a foundation for a contemporary re‑examination of the science and religion debate. Commenting on his appointment, Dr van Dijk said: "The intellectual life of the Church finds itself at an unprecedented moment of reflection on the products of modern science and technology, and Newman’s thoughtful and nuanced engagement with the Victorian sciences is a model for similar engagements today. I am thrilled to bring a History of Science perspective to Newman studies, and am looking forward to being part of the St Edmund’s College Fellowship." Please join us in congratulating Dr van Dijk. Corpus Christi College Cambridge #Cambridge #CatholicStudies #Fellowship #JohnHenryNewman