Symposium 2025 – April 12th – you’re all invited

With Nigel Barley, author of The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut.

What happens when theology meets anthropology?

Don’t miss the chance to hear Nigel Barley’s fascinating account of his anthropological fieldwork among the Dowayos in Cameroon. 

He shares vivid stories of the bewildering mystery of living among people whose culture is so different it leaves the Westerner spinning from one misunderstanding to another.

What’s the theme for 2025?

This year’s theme is anthropology and what anthropological studies might bring to our understanding of Christianity in its great array of global forms. 

Nigel Barley, author of The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut, builds trust and even finds friendship among the Dowayos, but he continues to amaze them with the depths of his cluelessness!

This is a humble account of anthropological investigation, and Barley does little to flatter Western pretensions of understanding. 

It’s also very funny, moving, and strangely revealing of the humanness that makes us a single human race, the strange culture-making creature who has constructed many different forms of life. Also, of course, the creature we confess as ‘made in God’s image’.

What is the Symposium?

Every year, St Augustine’s College of Theology hosts the Symposium, a day in which we think about theology and faith from the perspective of disciplines outside those theological students usually encounter in their courses. 

Everyone is welcome to attend, both current students and alumni.

When: April 12th 2025

Time: 9:15 am 

Where: The King’s School, Canterbury. 

Expect stories, laughter, and conversation.

To confirm your space and for further details, email d.peddar@staugustinescollege.ac.uk