Practical Theology (DTh)

Program Overview

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This part-time professional doctorate program enhances evaluative and reflective skills for career advancement in Christian theology-related fields. It focuses on using research to bridge academic theology and faith practice, empowering individuals to contribute to theological discourse while reflecting on their own practice. Students engage in a publishable article, research design, advanced practical theology, and dissertation to develop their research abilities and advance their professional profiles.

Program Outline

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Degree Overview:

An experience like no other. A part-time professional doctorate programme which will enhance the evaluative and reflective skills required to go further in your career.

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Objectives:

• To develop the advanced research, evaluative and reflective skills necessary to further their professional and career profile.
• To contribute from their practice to wider theological discourse.

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Description:

This programme will help those already engaged in professional contexts relevant to Christian theology to develop the advanced research, evaluative and reflective skills necessary to further their professional and career profile, and contribute form their practice to wider theological discourse.

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Outline:

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Stage 1 (Taught):

• Compulsory Modules:
• Research Design (1): Literature Review and Research Questions: This module aims to equip students to identify, access and engage critically with a significant quantity of appropriate literature and current research in their proposed area of study, and identify significant gaps, uncertainties, or new possibilities that might reasonably suggest key research questions and inform the design of their doctoral projects.
• Research Design (2): Methodology and Research Proposal: This module enables students to construct a final stage project proposal for their doctoral research.
• Advanced Questions in Practical Theology: This module is intended to introduce students to the questions, skills, concepts and debates they will need to grasp in order to undertake doctoral research in practical theology, and to enable students to identify the approaches that are best suited to their interests and proposed areas of study.

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Stage 2 (Research):

• Dissertation: This module is the research dissertation that embodies and completes the outcomes of this professional doctoral programme.

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Careers:

• Potential Career Paths:
• Pastoral Councillor
• Chaplain
• Theological Educator
• Community Outreach Coordinator
• Spiritual Director
• Worship Leader
• Nonprofit Programme Director
• Church Administrator

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Other:

• Research Strengths: Empirical, pastoral, systematic and public theology across a range of UK and global church traditions and mission contexts, including Roman Catholic, Anglican, Baptist and Pentecostal.
• Open to Researchers from a Diversity of Faith Backgrounds: While the programme works largely within Christian paradigms of practical theology, the programme is open to researchers from a diversity of faith backgrounds where staff are equipped to teach and supervise.
• Expected Time Commitment: Students will commit, on (calendar year) average, around 15-20 hrs per week to their doctoral research.
• Program Focus: Focusing on using research to develop theological practice, to the mutual enrichment of both academic theology and faith practice.
• Student Profile: DTh students are part-time, integrating their study and research with a wide variety of professional and practical contexts – in voluntary organisations and faith sector work, in lay work and ministry, in social justice movements and education.
• Program Outcomes: Students will prepare for more senior level, national or international roles, as leaders, advisers or consultants in faith-practice and ministry.
As a practitioner of Practical Theology, this course will encourage you to reflect technically and theologically on your practice, and on the application of scholarship and research to a range of faith, ecclesial and missiological contexts.
• Research Skills Development: The programme will provide you with extensive knowledge and understanding of areas of Practical Theology and the critical methods practised at the forefront of the discipline.
Students be enabled to reflect on these research methods in looking at their own practice, researching this both empirically (where appropriate) and from theological discourses, producing findings that satisfy peer scrutiny and are deemed to be of publishable quality, making an original contribution to knowledge.

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UK Students

September 2024 entry tuition fees UK: £3,470

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International Students

September 2024 entry tuition fees To be confirmed.