John m hull biography

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[Image: Turtle lamp shining speckled light and shadows on John Hull’s book. Book cover dark blue with white font.]

John Hull is an Australian-born scholar of theology who became completely blind in 1983. As a child he struggled with poor health and eczema, and his eye problems began when he was a teenager. He contracted cataracts and lost sight in one eye. Following several operations sight was restored in the right eye, but the retina had gradually become detached and sight deteriorated over time until he lost all sight. The book is a rewrite of another book, Touching the Rock: An experience of blindness (1990), a transcript of his recorded diary of his first days as a blind person, with some additional chapters from August 1986. The oral nature of the cassette diary speaks through the text in its natural flow of dialogue and introspection; the reader feels a sense of ‘blindness’ in learning about Hull’s world through description, just as he learned about his surroundings from the descriptions by others. We are asked to imagine and fill in lacunae whe

ABOUT

The second of four children of Madge (nee Hutley), a schoolteacher, and Jack, a Methodist minister, Hull was born in 1935, in Corryong in the state of Victoria, Australia. Following a first degree at Melbourne University and an early career in teaching, he studied theology in Cambridge, UK, where he remained, working as a teacher, religious educator and theologian.

In 1989, Hull became professor of religious education at Birmingham University, the first full professorship in the subject at a UK university. Following his retirement in 2002 he taught at the Queens Foundation where the emphasis of his teaching and research moved from religious education in mainstream secular contexts to the training of ordinands for Christian ministry. 

As a religious educator Hull was influenced by extensive study in the complimentary disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology and politics. He presented an inclusive and pluralistic religious education as a critically open study which he believed should be seen primarily as a ‘gift’ to students&rsq

John M. Hull

British academic

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John Hull

Born

John Martin Hull


(1935-04-22)22 April 1935

Corryong, Victoria, Australia

Died28 July 2015(2015-07-28) (aged 80)

Birmingham, England, U.K.

NationalityAustralian, domiciled in the UK from 1962
EducationGeneral arts, education, theology
Alma materUniversity of Melbourne, University of Cambridge, University of Birmingham
Occupation(s)Professor of Religious Education at University of Birmingham; later
Honorary Professor of Practical Theology in The Queen's Foundation, Birmingham
Years activeIn higher education: 1966–2015
Known forModern approach to RE in schools
Editor of BJRE, 1971 to 1996
Co-founder of ISREV, 1978, and its General Secretary until 2010
Writings on blindness and disability
Training future CofE & Methodist ministers in prophetic witness
TitleEmeritus Professor of Religious Education
AwardsLitt.D. (Cambridge) for work on RE
Hon. D.Theol. (Frankfurt) Dr. H.C. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Festschrift Education, Religion, & Society