My principal research activity at present is directed towards my PhD thesis on subsidiarity in Anglican canon law.

In 2023, I launched a new network of the Cardiff Centre for Law and Religion, the Porvoo Church Law Symposium. The network is a small group of academics, clergy, and lawyers with knowledge and experience of the laws and other regulatory systems applicable to Porvoo Communion member churches, who contribute to the Symposium through academic papers and discussion.

In 2021-2, working with Norman Doe, Mark Hill, and Stephen Coleman, I convened a joint project of the Ecclesiastical Law Society and the Cardiff Centre for Law and Religion, directed towards study and revision of the Principles of Canon Law Common to the Churches of the Anglican Communion. I co-ordinated ten online reading groups from around the world which studied the Principles during 2021. In 2021-2 I convened the revision committee which has updated the Principles, and the revised edition was launched at the 2022 Lambeth Conference of bishops from across the Anglican Communion. I have presented papers on this work at conferences in Cardiff and in Rome.

I pursue my interest in ecumenism through canon law by my membership of the Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers, a network of the Cardiff Centre for Law and Religion. I have given papers at the meetings of the Colloquium, in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. In January 2023, I gave a paper on the Anglican canonical approaches to synodality at the ‘Listening to the West’ conference at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. 

I am also a member of the Church Law History Consortium, another network of the Cardiff Centre for Law and Religion. I gave a paper at the inaugural meeting in 2022 at Magdalene College, Cambridge, on the development of the law of the Church of England 1901-1947.

Thesis

The Principle of Subsidiarity in Anglican Canon Law: A Comparative Study

In the latest ARCIC agreed statement, Walking together on the Way, the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches have committed to exploring ‘through the study of the Church local, trans-local, and universal… what Anglicans and Catholics could learn from one another’. The document expressly commends ‘the further development of … commonly accepted canonical principles.’ In response to this call, I am exploring whether the principle of subsidiarity, as found in Roman Catholic social teaching and canon law, could become a more explicitly recognized principle in Anglican canon law.

Funding sources

I am grateful to the Trustees of Ascot Priory, the Cleaver Ordination Candidates Fund, and the Chichester Theological Trust for funding my research.