Dr Dafydd Daniel
Lecturer in Divinity
Biography
Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel is Lecturer in Divinity, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Before joining St Andrews in September 2022, Dafydd was the McDonald Lecturer in Christian Ethics (2017-2022) and Coordinator of Applied Theology (2021-2022) at the University of Oxford. He read for a BA in Theology and Religious studies at Peterhouse, Cambridge, before completing a Masters in Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Yale, where he was a Marquand Scholar. After completing his DPhil in Theology at Oxford, Dafydd undertook a PGCE in Religious Education, also at Oxford.
Dafydd is a BBC and AHRC New Generation Thinker. His BBC radio documentaries include: Bob Dylan and the Ferry; Sir Isaac Newton and the Philosophers' Stone; Why the killing of 7 protesters in 1768 was a “massacre”; and, Where do human rights come from? (which was featured in the Penguin Audio Book Instant Expert: 100 of the best ideas from New Generation Thinkers).
Dafydd has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze (to discuss rights and duties); at the English National Opera (to discuss Oscar Wilde’s Salome); at the Scottish Land Commission (to discuss models for landownership); and in Series 3, Episode 4 of National Geographic’s The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (to discuss the practice of sin-eating). He has also contributed regularly to BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, on a range of topics, including: John Henry Newman; George Eliot; radical deism; individualism and community; and nature writing (where Dafydd’s contribution, on the 18th century ‘parson-naturalist’, Gilbert White, was featured as choice in the Radio Times).
An amateur writer of fiction, Dafydd was a Bridport Prizewinner in 2020, for his short story, ‘What The Deal Is’, and one of six authors shortlisted for the Society of Authors’ ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award 2021.
Teaching
DI1001 – God and the World: Introducing Theology
DI1014 – The Good Life: Christian Ethics and Human Flourishing
DI2010 – Philosophical Theology
DI4634 – God and Morality: Faith and Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment
DI4835 – Christianity and Politics: Patriotism, Republicanism, and Cosmopolitanism
DI5539 – The Good Life and the Good Death: Theological and Practical Ethics
Research areas
Theological and philosophical ethics; historical theology and the history of Western philosophy; philosophical theology; intellectual and church history (with a particular focus on early modern Britain)
PhD supervision
- Jeahong Oh
- Spencer Davidson
Selected publications
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Benjamin Hoadly, Samuel Clarke, and the Ethics of the Bangorian Controversy: Church, State, and the Moral Law
Daniel, D. M., Nov 2020, In: Religions. 11, 11Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Ethical Rationalism and Secularisation in the British Enlightenment: Conscience and the Age of Reason
Mills Daniel, D., 2020, Palgrave Macmillan. 344 p.Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Modern Infidels, Conscientious Fools, and the Douglas Affair: The Orthodox Rhetoric of Conscience in the Scottish Enlightenment
Daniel, D. M., Jul 2020, In: The Journal of Religion. 100, 3, p. 327-360Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Models of (Re-)Enchantment
Daniel, D., Mar 2019, In: Inference. 4, 3Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article
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Briefly: 25 Great Philosophers from Plato to Sartre
Daniel, D. M., Mills Daniel, D. & Daniel, M., 2011Research output: Book/Report › Book
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Briefly: Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil
Daniel, D. M. & Mills Daniel, D., 2007, SCM Press.Research output: Book/Report › Book