People

Patrons Marcus Braybrooke Peggy Morgan	Trustees Charanjit Ajit Singh (Chair) David Storey (Treasurer) Madeleine Harman (Friends Secretary) Norbert Klaes Matthew Smith	Staff and Volunteers Joy Barrow (Director) Madeleine Harman Kashmira Patel Margaret Paton Christopher Veit
Consultants Keith Ward Shaunaka Rishi Das

 

 

 

 

 

Short Biographies (in alphabetical order; where available)

Charanjit AjitSingh has been actively involved in interfaith dialogue in the United Kingdom for over three decades. She has been associated with the International Interfaith Centre since its inception in 1992, firstly as the co-chair of the Advisory Committee which consisted of academics and practitioners of different religions and later as a trustee. She has made significant contributions locally, regionally and nationally for improving community relations and human equality. She has also presented papers at international inter-religious conferences organised by the World Council of Churches, the Vatican and the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. She contributes regularly to books and magazines and is on the editorial board of the magazine Faith Initiative. Her book on the Wisdom of Sikhism received good reviews. A former lecturer, principal, director and educational inspector, Charanjit is currently the chair of the IIC board of Trustees.

Joy Barrow has been involved in interfaith dialogue for over twenty years.  After teaching Religious Studies in London secondary schools for twenty five years, in September 2005 she became Director of the International Interfaith Centre in Oxford.  She is a member of the executive committee of the World Congress of Faiths and the committee of the British Chapter of the International Association of Religious Freedom.  Joy is also a member of the Methodist Church Committee for Interfaith Relations, with responsibility for relations with Sikhs and education in a multi faith society and coordinator of Faith Awareness, a local interfaith group in Southall, West London. She has been studying Sikhism, and involved in interfaith dialogue, for over twenty five years.  She regularly visits local Sikh places of worship and leads university field trips in Sikh studies to Southall.  Joy has a PhD in Sikh spirituality from Leeds University and, in 2003, was a Visiting Fellow in Sikh studies at Punjabi University, India.  She edited 'Meeting Sikhs', which is published by Christians Aware, and wrote 'World Faiths: Sikhism' for Chrysalis Books.  She has presented academic papers on Sikhism internationally and contributed to a variety of other publications.

Marcus Braybrooke has been involved in interfaith work for over forty years, After studying in India, he joined the World Congress of Faiths in 1964 and is now its President. He is a Co-Founder of the Three Faiths Forum and a Peace Councillor. He helped to establish the International Interfaith Centre at Oxford, of which he is now a Patron. Marcus is a retired Anglican parish priest, living near Oxford, England. He is author of over forty books on world religions and Christianity, including Pilgrimage of Hope, What We Can Learn from Hinduism, What We Can Learn from Islam and The Wider Vision – a history of the World Congress of Faiths. He has also written Learn to Pray and 365 Meditations for a Peaceful Heart and a Peaceful World and has edited several anthologies of prayers and meditations, including 1,000 World Prayers and Life Lines. His latest book is A Heart for the World: the Interfaith Alternative, published by John Hunt. www.o-books.net . Mary, his wife, who is a social worker has shared in this work and is an active supporter of the International Interfaith Centre. They have a son and a daughter and six grandchildren and a poodle, called Toffee.

Madeleine Harman first became involved with the IIC ten years ago while reading theology as a mature student at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. She has helped out with events and with IIC Friends, and has a central house with parking well situated for meetings! Before that she was involved for many years with ecumenical matters in her home parish of Great Chesham, where it took more than ten years before the thirteen different Christian churches could agree to share a service once a month. Consequently she understands that interfaith wheels grind exceedingly slowly. Her work experience has been with speech affected stroke civtims and with the care of the elderly and dying. She is married to Dan, and they farm beef and corn in Buckinghamshire.

Norbert Klaes was born in Essen, Germany, in 1938. After studies of Philosophy, Theology (Bonn, Innsbruck, Louvain) and of Oriental Studies (Oxford) (1957- 1969) Professor of Theology in Bombay and Research at the “Banaras Hindu University” in Varanasi (1969-1975). Wiss. Assistant of Systematic Theology (Bochum), Professor of Fundamental Theology and Study of Religion (Paderborn) and Missionswissenschaft ( Würzburg) (1975-1985). 1985-2003 Professor of History of Religion (Würzburg). – Work for the interreligious organisation “Religions for Peace “ (WCRP) in Nairobi (1982-1983), as President of WCRP/Europe (1983-1999) and as Co-President of WCRP/International (since 1999).- Author and editor of several books and of numerous articles in theology, history of religion and inter-religious dialogue. Essays in Honor of N.Klaes, Begegnung von Religion und Kultur. 1998.

Peggy Morgan currently lectures in the study of religions for the Theology Faculty, University of Oxford and is based at Mansfield College. She has been involved in interfaith dialogue and the study of religions for over forty years and has supported the IIC since its beginning, including giving the Inaugural Lecture, which was published in the journal NUMEN. She is a past Honorary President of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Director of the Religious Experience Research Centre and Chair of the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education. She has written and lectured widely on Buddhism. Her research and publications are based on participant observation and include: Six Religions in the Twenty-First Century (with W Owen Cole, 2000) and Get Set for Religious Studies (with Dominic Corrywright, 2006), Testing The Global Ethic (with Marcus Braybrooke and others), and a second edition due late in 2006 of the best-selling Ethical Isssues in Six Religious Traditions (with Clive Lawton, First edition 1996).

Matthew Smith has been involved with the International Interfaith Centre since its launch - first as an active supporter, then as Chair of the Advisory Board and then, in recent years, as a trustee. He worked for fourteen years as Information Officer for the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches; during that time, he set up and ran a series of interfaith encounters between Unitarian and Sufis, represented Unitarians in Britain at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago (1993) and Cape Town (1999), and was secretary to the Unitarian Interfaith Sub-Committee. He is the editor of two collections of essays published by the Lindsey Press - Prospects for the Unitarian Movement (2002) and Being Together: Unitarians Celebrate Congregational Life (2006). He now works in local government.

David Storey graduated from Cambridge University in Economics and Law, worked for some years in the local newspaper and printing industry. He then worked in education particularly in the Careers Service, from which he took early retirement. In 1989 became involved in interfaith affairs through Marcus Braybrooke who he first met at theological college in 1963. He served as secretary to the International committee of the World Congress of Faiths and joint secretary with his wife Celia to the International Interfaith Organisations Committee for 1993 which planned the year as an international year of Interfaith understanding and co-operation and put on the conference in India. He and his wife then moved to Oxford to help set up the International Interfaith Centre of which she was a joint co-ordinator and later trustee and treasurer. After she had retired David became a trustee in 2004. For most of his life he was very involved as a layman in the Church of England up to diocesan level.