Beyond The Dark Clouds Podcast

Professor Damien Page, Deputy Vice Chancellor at Buckinghamshire New University, talks about what gives him ‘hope’ in the current HE climate whilst also sharing advice and guidance for our current student body on what he feels are important points to keep in mind for a positive future. Being a ‘disrupter’, asking questions as well as being critical of ideas and concepts is something that Damien me...

Christine Allen, Director of CAFOD, (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), shares her own leadership journey as well as what gives her hope in the world and in what she is leading as part of CAFOD’s global mission. She also explains CAFOD’s role in raising awareness at events such as COP28 (which took place in Dubai this year) as well as sharing some examples of how her team have made a diffe...

Tom Riordan CBE – leader of Leeds City Council – discusses the importance of the faith communities in Leeds and their contribution to the city during Covid lockdown in particular. He also discusses his own journey to senior executive positions at the Council and offers guidance and support to students as post-graduation. He also shares his ‘hope’ for education more generally in Leeds.

Sir John Battle shares his theological perspectives on hope and asks whether it matters whether we are rich or poor in the face of some of the most challenging moral problems of our time. Sir John also argues that people of faith should continuously ask questions about how their faith translates into action. He argues for what Jean Guillett (advisor to Pope Paul VI) called a ‘approfundimento conti...

Professor Jane de Gay shares her insight on the mission and values of a Catholic University today and links it to the stages of enquiry about ‘faith’ and ‘conversion’ as described in the works of Virginia Wolfe. Jane engages in a profound, in-depth analysis of Wolfe’s texts in order to show the complexities surrounding professing a faith and links this to contemporary challenges that many experien...

Anthony McClaran, Vice-Chancellor at St Mary’s University in Twickenham, shares his thoughts on the mission and purpose of the Catholic University as well as aspects of his own journey to executive level leadership. Listeners will be inspired by his honesty about the highs and lows of leadership as well as his description of what he loves about HE, especially when he see students graduate. He clos...

Catherine Herring from Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College explains how and why she set up the Leadership Award for students at Notre Dame to develop character virtues and to develop as leaders whilst making a difference to their school context, their peers and their communities. Students also give their views on the award and on how transformative it was for them as students.

John gives a poetic outline of the concept of friendship as the seedbed for spiritual learning and synodality in the contemporary Church context. The experience of friendship plays a very important role in how people access, and welcome truth in their lives and along their path towards transformation. Friendship is a form of peer-ministry. There can be no social friendship without personal friends...

Dr Mealey draws out the significance of the principles contained mainly in Laborem Exercens about human dignity and how it can help the challenges of the contemporary HE sector to highlight the intrinsic value of everyone and to re-position how some of the tensions regarding pay, zero hours contracts, working conditions and how people feel about themselves at University can be overcome. When peopl...

Kate Adams, Professor of Education at Leeds Trinity University, shares her research on children’s spirituality. She gives an in-depth account of the literature in the field of spirituality and suggests that the school curriculum should provide more opportunities for children to explore concepts such as spirituality and advises us to ‘listen’ to, and to engage with, children’s experiences as much a...

Nicolas Vergier, from the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU), shares his reflections on the nature and purpose of a Catholic university. A concept that is often misunderstood in today’s world and, at times, within the HE sector itself, this podcast should help to promote a positive vision for the ‘good’ that the Catholic university is called to do in the world. Dr Ann Marie M...

Philip Booth gives his perspectives on how Catholic Social Teaching can help to humanise economic life and provide the much-needed ‘check and balance’ to ensure that businesses remain ethical and just. Dr Ann Marie Mealey gives her thoughts on what an ‘ethical’ business might look like in a competitive job market as well as sharing her thoughts on what her students – over a 16-year career in teach...

Tony Blockley, Professor of policing at Leeds Trinity University, speaks about his experiences as a detective and as a person who has worked at various levels of the police force. Tony advocates for the need for ethics and values to be part of the training of police officers, and for there to be a greater awareness of the relevance that faith can play in our communities as it can be both unifying...

Dr Tobias Winright, Professor of Moral Theology at Saint Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland, gives a talk on what ‘just policing’ might look like in the contemporary world. He also probes the possibility of using the ‘just war’ tradition as a basis for reconceptualising the police as ‘servants of life’ rather than as merely agents of law enforcement. Reflections from Dr Ann Marie...

A preview of the upcoming lecture series 'Beyond The Dark Clouds' curated by Dr Ann Marie Mealey at Leeds Trinity University. Dr Ann-Marie chats with Darren Harper about her role at LTU as Director of Catholic Mission - and what she hopes to achieve through the conversations we'll have on this podcast which runs alongside the lecture series....