Teresa Morgan


The Reverend Professor Teresa Morgan is an English academic and cleric, best known as the author of Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds and Roman Faith and Christian Faith.

Early life and education

Morgan attended Oxford High School before studying the violin at the Hochschule für Musik, Cologne. She studied as an undergraduate and graduate student at Clare College, Cambridge and as a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music. She was a Research Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge and Newnham College, Cambridge, Fellow of University College, Oxford, and has been a Fellow of Oriel College since 2000. She holds a master's degree and doctorate from Cambridge, Dip. R.A.M., L.R.A.M., and a master's degree from Oxford.

Academic career

Her research interests lie in the study of ancient education, ethics and early Christianity and contemporary historiography. Her work encompasses aspects of the relationship between literature and society in antiquity, cultural and intellectual history and early Christian history and theology. She broadcasts regularly on radio and television and writes for The Tablet, The Church Times and The Times Literary Supplement.
Morgan is Professor of Graeco-Roman History in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford and Nancy Bissell Turpin Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Oriel College, Oxford. She has served as University Assessor, as an elected member of the governing Council of Oxford University, Associate Head of the Humanities Division of the University, Chair of the Faculty of Classics, and Chair of several university committees and working groups. She is a Trustee of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

Roman Faith and Christian Faith

Roman Faith and Christian Faith is a much discussed study of how early Christians understood and practised 'faith'. It argues that for early Christians, trust and faithfulness, rather than belief in doctrines or non-rational fideism, were salvific and central to life in a Christian community. It locates Christian understandings of pistis/fides in their context in Hellenistic Judaism and Greco-Roman society, arguing that belief and orthodoxy become central to later Christianity through contact with Greek philosophy and religion. In 2017 Morgan received a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to write the sequel to Roman Faith and Christian Faith, investigating the evolution of Christian faith between the second and fifth centuries CE and its impact on late Rome and her successor states.

Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds

Morgan's most cited book, Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds examines Hellenistic and Roman education and re-interprets the function of literature, grammar and rhetoric in education, as well as looking at Hellenistic and Roman theories of cognitive development. Morgan's Literate Education in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds is on the reading lists of many university courses and modules in the UK and the United States.

Ordained ministry

Morgan was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 2002 and as a priest in 2003. Since 2002, she has been a non-stipendiary minister of the Church of St Mary and St Nicholas, Littlemore in the Diocese of Oxford.

Selected works