HDR Research

Ali Hammoud is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Shīʿīsm and Islamicate intellectual history. His doctoral project examines Maḥbūb al-Qulūb, a little-known doxography authored by 17^th century Shīʿī philosopher Qutb al-Dīn Ashkivarī.  He received a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in history, in 2015 (Western Sydney University) and completed his Master of Research in 2018 (Western Sydney University).  He has published “Interpretations of Qurʾānic Violence in Shīʿī Islam,” in Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts: An Interreligious Perspective, edited by Maria Power and Helen Paynter, 165-186, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023 and “That I May Unfold The Pain Of Yearning.”  Sydney Review of Books,  2023.

Sarah Bacaller is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. Her thesis explores concepts of God and the self in Hegel. Sarah has recently been a co-investigator in a University of Divinity funded research project, 'Openings for collaborative theology through classical Yolŋu and Warlpiri epistemologies', and is co-editing a 2023 special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies on relational epistemologies in Australian Indigenous thought and performance. Sarah is also on the editing collective of the Journal of Continental Philosophy, and has had work published by Logos: Journal of the World Publishing Community, The Conversation (AU), Zee Feed and Sydney Review of Books. Sarah co-directs Voices of Today, an Australian independent publisher and audiobook production company.

Zolt Salontai is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. He is broadly interested in Christian theology and intellectual history encompassing the reception of philosophical ideas by Christian writers. His doctoral project examines the way in which the Christian theological tradition, as both dogmatically and critically conceived has concealed the centrality of Jesus Christ with philosophical refurbishments drawn from Hellenic substance ontology and modernist historicist assumptions. In attempting to answer this question, he enlists the aid of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer with their respective phenomenological and hermeneutical insights. He received a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in history and political thought, in 2018 (Western Sydney University) and completed his Master of Liberal Arts in 2021 (University of Notre Dame). He has published Salontai, Z. (2020). "An Examination of the Significance of the Trinitarian Theology of St. Augustine," Aristos 5(1), 1-17.

Marley Krok is a PhD Candidate at Western Sydney University. Her research interests are focused on the emergence of new religious movements, the relationship between sacred texts and lived traditions, and the treatment of religion under Australian Law. Her thesis will attempt to combine all of these through reconsideration of the legal definition of Religion and its application to New Religious Movements like the Harry Potter Fandom. She was a recipient of the Sir Zelman Cowen University Student Exchange Fellowship Scholarship in 2018 to spend a semester studying Near Eastern Archaeology and Hebrew at the Rothberg International School of The Hebrew University Jerusalem. In 2019, she completed a combined Bachelor of Laws and Theology (University of Notre Dame) with a double major in Biblical Literature and Philosophy followed by her Master of Research in 2022 (Western Sydney University). Marley presented a paper ‘Joseph Smith’s Revelations and the Founding of the Church of Christ’ at the Australian Association for the Study of Religion, Online Conference 2020 and was a co-author on a chapter “The Paradox of Gendered Holiness in Islamic Mysticism,” in Islam, Civility and Political Culture, edited by Milad Milani and Vassilios Adrahtas, 157-180, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.