Dr Rebekah Lamb-Varela

Director of Teaching

Lecturer in Theology, Imagination and the Arts

Phone: +44 (0)1334 46 2840
Email: rl89@st-andrews.ac.uk

Research areas

Biography

Dr Rebekah Lamb-Varela is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Theology and the Arts in the School of Divinity and a staff member of the Institute of Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA). She also serves as Director of Teaching in Theology and Biblical Studies.

Prior to joining St Andrews, Dr Lamb-Varela was the inaugural Étienne Gilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD in Victorian and Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature, with an emphasis on religion and literature, and her Master's in English Literature from Western University (London, ON, Canada). She holds an Honours BA in Liberal Arts from the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (New Hampshire, USA and Rome, Italy).

Teaching

DI5451: Christian Doctrine and the Arts.
DI5925: Theology and the Arts (Distance Learning)
DI5453: Practical Criticism
DI5080: Guided Study (Joseph Pieper)
DI4751: CS Lewis and the Inklings
DI4936: Theology and Literature
DI2011: Religion Today
DI2009: Saints & Cyborgs: The Imagination in Theology and Science

Research Areas

Dr Lamb-Varela's primary area of research is Theology and the Arts, particularly religion and literature, theological aesthetics, and Christian doctrine's influence on popular culture from 1750 to the present. Her second strand of research in Systematic and Historical Theology focuses on Mariology, especially its reception in the Victorian context; sacramental theology; and the history of global modern Catholic literary revivals.

Shaped by her training in the classical liberal arts, her work is interdisciplinary by nature, bringing literary and cultural studies into conversation with theological aesthetics and concerns central to systematic and historical theology, particularly Christology and anthropology. Her work approaches the arts not simply as objects of theological interpretation but as distinctive modes of theological inquiry and disclosure in their own right.

Her current work includes the theology of consolation in modernity, Catholic women's writing (1850-present), John Henry Newman, Christina Rossetti, Thérèse of Lisieux, J. R. R. Tolkien, and, more broadly, the relationships between Catholicism, modernity, and the literary imagination.

Publications and Projects

Dr Lamb-Varela is Co-Principal Investigator on the Royal Society of Edinburgh-funded project Catholic Women Writers in Scotland and Beyond. Its primary output is the first Handbook of Modern Catholic Women Writers, forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2028, which she is co-editing with scholars from Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, and Warwick.

Her first monograph, Writing Charity: Consolations in Modernity (McGill-Queen's University Press, forthcoming 2027), offers a constructive account of the theology of consolation in the writings of John Henry Newman, Christina Rossetti, Thérèse of Lisieux, and J. R. R. Tolkien. It considers how modern Christian understandings of charity engage with and re-evaluate the hermeneutics of disenchantment and scepticism predominant in modern literary studies.

With Michael D. Hurley (Cambridge), she co-edited a volume on John Henry Newman's aesthetic and religious sense (Religion and Literature, 2023). Her other publications include articles, encyclopedia and handbook entries, book chapters, and review essays in Religion and Literature, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing, New Blackfriars, Theology in Scotland, Nova et Vetera, Church Life Journal, Magnificat, and elsewhere.

Academic Service and Outreach

Dr Lamb-Varela is the co-founder of the Annual St Margaret of Scotland Lecture Series and serves on the editorial boards of Newman Studies Journal, CTS Academic, and the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception for De Gruyter Brill. She is an elected Arts and Humanities representative on University Senate and an associate staff member of the Scottish Catholic Studies Arts Lab at the University of Glasgow.

On behalf of the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst, she served on the Commisioning Group that advised on the design of the Tolkien Memorial, to be unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner in 2027.

She also speaks for public-facing outlets including BBC Scotland, the CBC, Radio Maria, the McGrath Church Life Podcast, and chapers of the Thomistic Institute, as well as at conferences, workshops, chaplaincies, and parishes on topics relating to Catholicism and the humanities.

PhD supervision

Grace Bennett
David Bernabe Romero
Ian DeGroot
Bethany Gilbert
Lydia Kelliney
Fraser Newman
Jose Rama Dominguez
Melody Schwarting

Selected publications

Open access
'Amare nesciri': John Henry Newman on the hidden self
Lamb-Varela, R., 5 Oct 2026, (E-pub ahead of print) In: New Blackfriars. FirstView, 16 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
John Henry Newman's idea of the holy
Lamb-Varela, R., 2028, John Henry Newman's parochial and plain sermons: a critical guide. Levering, M. & de Gaal, E. (eds.). Emmaus Academic
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
J.R.R. Tolkien's detached aesthetics
Lamb-Varela, R., 2028, J.R.R. Tolkien: Christian perspectives, world literature. Schwartz, A. (ed.). Catholic University of America Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
‘They must be content to serve their generation': John Henry Newman on literature as edification
Lamb-Varela, R., 2028, In: Forum for Modern Languages Studies. In preparation
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Introduction
Lamb, R. A., 21 Nov 2025, Two discourses on our Lady. Lamb Varela, R. (ed.). London: CTS Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Foreword/postscript
John Henry Newman's "historical sense"
Lamb, R. A., Jul 2025, The nineteenth-century present: literature, print culture and historicity. Claes, K. & Ludlow, E. (eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, (Interventions: rethinking the nineteenth century (Series)).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Roman Catholicism
Lamb, R. A., 2025, The Cambridge companion to religion in Victorian literary culture. Knight , M. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
The Oxford handbook of modern Catholic women writers
Lamb, R. (Editor), Bicket, L. (Editor), Meszaros, J. (Editor), Lander Johnson, B. (Editor) & Mason, E. (Editor), 2029, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Research output: Book/Report › Book
Victorian Roman Catholicism
Lamb, R. A., 16 Jan 2025, Gerard Manley Hopkins in context. Dubois, M. (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 110-117 8 p. (Literature in context (Cambridge University Press)).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Christina Rossetti's Christology
Lamb, R. A., 12 Nov 2024, Holman Hunt and The Light of the World in Oxford. Bockmuehl, M. (ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, p. 52-70 19 p. (Routledge studies in theology, imagination and the arts).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

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