STEERING GROUP

Sophie Andreae has been the Vice Chair of the Patrimony Committee of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales since 2002. 

This Committee provides advice and guidance on all aspects of Catholic heritage as well as acting at the link between the Catholic Church in England and Wales and public bodies such as Historic England and Cadw.

Sophie is an architectural historian who has spent her career helping to protect historic buildings and promote them to a wider public. She has served on a number of heritage bodies, including as a Trustee of Historic Royal Palaces, as an elected Council Member of the National Trust and as member of the Fabric Advisory Committee for St Paul’s Cathedral. 

Leonora Butau is a Catholic theologian, educator and speaker based in San Antonio, Texas. 

Prior to moving to the USA in 2018, Leonora worked at St. Mary's University in London, England, where she spent eight years teaching courses in Catholic Ethics and Catholic Spirituality and where she organised national and international theological formation events. 

She also worked for Caritas Social Action Network, the charitable agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales. 

While in the USA, she has worked as a Program Director for the St. John Paul II Foundation and has presented national talks in the areas of spiritual life, marriage and family, and the Theology of the Body. 

Leonora, with her husband Rufaro, lead and direct the School of Mary in the USA. She also serves Natural Womanhood, a non-profit that focuses on women's healthcare, as a Board of Director. 

She earned a BA in Theology and Religious Studies and an MA in Bioethics from St. Mary's University, London, and has a PhD in Theology from the University of Surrey, England.

Gavin D'Costa is Emeritus Professor of Catholic Theology, University of Bristol and Visiting Professor of Interreligious Dialogue, Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Rome   

Gavin’s research interests include modern Roman Catholic theology, systematic theology, theology of religions, aspects of philosophical theology related to religious pluralism. He teaches on modern theology, Catholic theology, theology of religions, interfaith dialogue, Christians and Muslims, and methods and approaches to religion. 

Gavin has taught at Bristol since 1991. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya and completed his education in England. He studied English and Theology (BA) at Birmingham University with John Hick as his dissertation tutor and then completed his doctoral work at Cambridge University. He taught in London until moving to Bristol and was also Joseph McCarthy Professor at the Gregorian University, Rome. 

He acts as an advisor to the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Anglican Church on matters of interreligious dialogue and theology. He also advises the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Vatican City.  

John Eade is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Roehampton and Visiting Professor at Toronto University. 

After research in Kolkata (Calcutta) on the social identity of the educated Bengali Muslim middle class, he completed his PhD in 1986 on Bangladeshi community politics in Tower Hamlets. 

Since then he has researched cultural diversity and the global city, British Bangladeshi identity politics, the Islamisation of urban space and pilgrimage. 

He co-founded the Routledge Studies on Religion, Travel and Tourism and is a co-editor of the Bloomsbury Religion, Space and Place series. In 2018 he co-founded the European Association of Social Anthropologists Pilgrimage Network (PilNet).