Connections

My work grows from ideas that I find vivid, expansive, and endlessly generative.

Through writing, world-building, thought experiments and imaginative projects, I wade into the questions, tensions and unexpected connections that fascinate me. And I attempt to create forms of accessible 'scaffolding' to engage others so we can explore collaboratively. It's like I'm plotting co-ordinates on a scatter diagram, and allowing a line of best fit to make itself known.

This page is an evolving map of that imaginative territory: the recurring questions, concepts and conceptual threads that run through my work.

Last updated: 20 Oct 2026

What exists and can be experienced before we even have words for it?

BEFORE LANGUAGE

I am exploring biblical examples, including Genesis 1 and higgaion in the Psalms, alongside questions about memory, experience, sensation and relationship. What precedes our descriptions? What remains when words are inadequate? And what happens when familiar language gives us the impression that we have understood something we may not yet have heard? This might say something louder about 'the unspoken.'

Do we notice when some kinds of value count, and others don't?

SIGNIFICANCE

Data is one example. Doctrine might be another. So might efficiency, productivity, institutional priorities or financial returns. These can all matter. But what happens when our ways of measuring and organising things begin to determine what we recognise as valuable? I am interested in the quieter, less easily classified goods — including relationships, experiences and forms of significance that are made to seem so insignificant.

WHEN SYSTEMS MEET PEOPLE

What happens when systems designed to help, organise or understand people encounter actual human beings?

I am fascinated by the points where categories, procedures and structures begin to fail us — or where they work so smoothly that we stop noticing what they exclude. Who is accountable when a system's apparent success conceals something important about what is happening to the people within it? How does this influence the formation and development of human thinking, and our capacity to notice anything beyond.

What happens when a familiar image becomes a way of thinking?

METAPHOR

Just as our families have ways of doing things and talking about things that bear traces of shared events and moments, our minds seem to work this way too. My writing involves drawing from anecdotes and examples that have shaped my understanding, as well as suggesting new hypothetical versions that could throw light. I'm particularly interested by the dynamics and kinematics and dramaturgy and choreography found in apparently unconnected areas like engineering, and maths. This might be very telling.

Can new forms of scaffolding allow us to explore what our existing frameworks make difficult to see?

SCAFFOLDING

Studying philosophy gave me ways to wander around the thoughts and images of my faith with new confidence. I continue to experiment with conceptual, imaginative and practical scaffolding — from metaphors and thought experiments, to inhabitable fictional spaces. These structures are not the reality, they're more like the sketch on a back of an envelope. But they help us explore. They may be useful precisely because they can be questioned, rearranged, extended or taken down. Torn up. Framed.

Is the Bible more than what we have been taught to do with it?

THE BIBLE

The Bible is often presented through preaching, persuasion, polemic and competing claims to certainty. I am interested in what happens when we take it seriously beside and beyond those uses — following the trajectories of its stories, the architecture of its connections, and its invitations into relationship with God.

I also wonder whether our changing habits of language and interpretation can make aspects of scripture harder to hear, even when the words remain familiar. Again — dynamic, choreography, trajectory, etc.

HEARING AND MISHEARING

I am interested in what happens between an utterance and its reception. We may hear the literal words but miss their history, experience or relational significance. We may also hear more than was said, importing assumptions that prevent us from recognising what is actually being communicated, or bringing light to it.

I am exploring these possibilities through language, AI, everyday conversation and scripture — including the possibility that what we fail to hear may be something essential.

What can we fail to hear, even when we understand the words?

ENCOUNTER AND CONTINGENCY

I am exploring what it means to meet, trust, create and participate in circumstances whose outcomes cannot be guaranteed or defined at surface level. Structures and safeguards matter, but so do vulnerability, freedom, responsibility and the possibility of being transformed.

Through theological reflection and imaginative practice, particularly Chapter Seventeen, I am interested in what happens when we create room for encounters. This includes The Empty Theatre imagery, with reference to Peter Brook, and Edward Bullough.

Can we make room for genuine encounter without controlling what it becomes?

ARTIFICIAL CERTAINTY

I'm interested in how certainty is constructed, communicated and received — particularly when fluent language, authoritative presentation or familiar frameworks make something appear more securely and confidently understood than it actually is.

AI offers some striking examples, but the question extends into institutions, theology, personal convictions and everyday relationships. What happens when we mistake a convincing articulation for knowledge, or a confident interpretation for the reality it claims to describe?

Might our artificial certainty sometimes prevent us from hearing something essential that challenges it?

When does the appearance of knowing stand in for understanding?

LEGIBILITY AND AUTHORITY

I'm interested in the difference between understanding something and being able to demonstrate that understanding in an approved form. Research methods, institutional credentials, specialist vocabularies and increasingly AI-mediated systems can be enormously useful. But what happens to kinds of wisdom that don't travel well through those channels?

It may not be efficient or water-tight to embrace things that lie beyond our usual categories and authorised versions. But what might we lose if we refuse to pay attention beyond our accepted conventions?

What happens when the systems we use to organise knowledge begin to determine who is taken seriously?

IMAGE AND IDOL

I'm exploring the relationships between image, likeness, identity and creation, particularly where theology meets artificial intelligence. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? What are we doing when we create something in our own image, and cede our positioning and authority to them? When does our language about what we have made begin to invest it with an identity or authority of its own?

I'm interested in what these questions might reveal about our understanding of God, humanity and the things we create. For example, AI. But not just AI.

What happens when we begin to attribute qualities to objects or ideas that elevate them to the status of God — or 'gods'?

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