Dr Tommy Lynch
Reader in Political Theology
About
Dr Tommy Lynch is Reader in Political Theology. He completed his PhD on G.W.F. Hegel, Catherine Malabou and Jacob Taubes at Durham University and came to the University of Chichester after teaching at the University of Roehampton. In 2017, he was part of a Collaborative International Research Grant awarded by the American Academy of Religion to research depictions of Islam in liberal philosophical and theological traditions. In 2021, he was a Fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University.
Professional
Dr Lynch is on the Executive Committee of the Political Theology Network and the International Advisory Board of ‘At the End of the World: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Apocalyptic Imaginary in the Past and Present’, a 6-year project at Lund University. He is an associate editor at the journal Political Theology and on the editorial board of the book series Political and Public Theologies: Comparisons-Coalitions-Critiques at Brill.
Publications
Dr Lynch has published in a range of journals, edited collections and online publications. The following are freely accessible:
- ‘How I Learned to Stop Hoping and Hate the World’ at Cursor_: Zeitschrift für Explorative Theologie
- ‘A Political Theology of the World That Ends’ in Wolds Ending, Ending Worlds: Understanding Apocalyptic Transformation
- ‘Climate Apocalypticism’ at the Political Theology Network
- ‘Why Hope is Dangerous When It Comes to Climate Change’ at Slate
You can also watch his lecture on an ‘Ethics for the End of the World’ delivered at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies.
Research
Dr Lynch has two main research areas. The first is philosophical conceptions of the end of the world. This includes work on concepts of the world, the nature of time, theories of crisis and how these topics shape ideas about freedom and agency. This research is rooted in political theology, drawing on Jacob Taubes, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin, but also draws connections to queer theory, black studies and contemporary work on the environment. This multidisciplinary approach was the focus of his book Apocalyptic Political Theology: Hegel, Taubes, and Malabou (2019) and is the basis of his current project on an ‘Ethics for the End of the World’. He is also interested in depictions of the end of the world in popular culture and is investigating race and gender in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films.
His second area of research is the intersection of race and religion. In a series of articles and essays, he has argued that the categories of ‘race’ and ‘religion’ are intricately related in Western philosophical and theological thought. His work explores the way that this connection is often overlooked and how this oversight impacts the politics of religion in purportedly secular societies.
PhD
Dr Lynch has supervised or is supervising PhDs on:
- Education in political philosophy
- Contemporary responses to the problem of evil
- Religion in the digital sphere
- Biopolitics of motherhood
- The role of chaplains in Church of England schools
He welcomes expressions of interest from students interested in postgraduate research on political theology, the end of the world and continental philosophy of religion.
Research Output
Articles
Lynch, T. (2022) Epistemic injustice and the veil: Islam, vulnerability, and the task of historical revisionism. Culture and Religion, 21 (3). pp. 280-297. ISSN 1475-5629 10.1080/14755610.2022.2115524
Lynch, T. (2020) Hegel, Islam, and Liberalism: Religion and the Shape of World History. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 47 (2). pp. 225-240. ISSN 0191-4537 10.1177/0191453720909406
Lynch, T. (2017) Divining history: prophetism, messianism and the development of the spirit. Jewish Culture and History, 19 (1). pp. 111-113. ISSN 2167-9428 10.1080/1462169x.2017.1410301
Lynch, T. (2017) Social Construction and Social Critique: Haslanger, Race and the Study of Religion. Critical Research on Religion, 5 (3). pp. 284-301. ISSN 2050-3032 10.1177/2050303217732133
Lynch, T. (2017) Transcendental Materialism as a Theoretical Orientation to the Study of Religion. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 29 (2). pp. 133-154. ISSN 0943-3058 10.1163/15700682-12341387
Lynch, T. (2010) Religion and Revolution: Slavoj Žižek’s Challenge to Liberation Theology. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 4 (4). ISSN 1751-8229
Book Sections
Lynch, T. (2023) A political theology of the world that ends. In: Worlds ending. Ending worlds: Understanding apocalyptic transformation. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic studies, 1 . De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 21-36. ISBN 9783110787009
Lynch, T. (2021) ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you’: Populism, political theology and the culturally repugnant other. In: The Spirit of Populism: Political Theologies in Polarized Times. Political and Public Theologies, 1 . Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, pp. 40-56. ISBN 9789004498310
Lynch, T. (2014) Making the quarter turn: liberation after Lacan. In: Theology After Lacan: The Passion for the Real. Cascade Books, Eugene, pp. 211-231.
Books
Lynch, T. (2019) Apocalyptic Political Theology: Hegel, Taubes and Malabou. Political Theologies . Bloomsbury, London. ISBN 9781350064744
Other department members
Alison MacLeod
Visiting Professor in Creative Writing
