#1: Our growing postgrad community hails from all around the globe.

Trinity postgraduate research (PGR) students are those students enrolled in either the Master of Theology (MTh) or Doctor in Philosophy (PhD) programmes at Trinity. Of the 37 postgraduate students currently enrolled at Trinity, 25 live outside the UK.

How did these students first connect with Trinity? Doctoral student Joshua Heavin, who lives in Dallas, Texas, where he is a pastoral intern at a Presbyterian church, first learned about Trinity from a professor at Redeemer Seminary in Dallas. Joshua’s professor called Trinity ‘a place that took the Kingdom of God seriously.’ Joshua recalls, ‘I had just finished reading Herman Ridderbos’s The Coming of the Kingdom and NT Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, and my imagination was immediately hooked! After getting further information and contacting my supervisor [Trinity New Testament Tutor Dr] Jamie Davies, I quickly realised this would be a great fit for me.’

Doctoral student Andrew Stager is Christian Life Coordinator and Theology and Philosophy Instructor at Yongsan International School of Seoul, South Korea. He is also an associate pastor at Covenant Church in Seoul. ‘The advantage with Trinity is that I can do the research programme part-time, with an advisor who is interested in my research and able to guide me without being overly directive. The fact that Trinity is an institution that is committed to the service of the Church and the Kingdom enables me to do my work with those same commitments in view. Yet Trinity’s research degrees are validated by, and the degrees are granted by, the University of Aberdeen, which means that the work I’m doing will be academically rigorous and recognised as such.’

As our distance students conduct their research, they meet regularly about their writing (via Skype or over the phone) with two advisors—one Trinity faculty member, and a second who is usually a faculty member from another university with added expertise in the student’s area of interest. Trinity’s local and distance postgraduate students join together at college annually for a week in June to attend a postgraduate research conference, during which students share research papers, listen to a lecture from a senior scholar, and enjoy meals and a sightseeing day trip together—the most recent was to the British Library to view the fourth century Codex Sinaiticus, with lunch at the famous Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub (once frequented by GK Chesterton, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and other famous literary figures).