Michael Ward, PhD

School of Christian Thought
Apologetics
  • Professor of Apologetics
  • Director, C.S. Lewis Centre

Education

  • PhD, Divinity, University of St Andrews
  • MA, Theology, University of Cambridge
  • MA, English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
  • BA, Theology, University of Cambridge
  • BA, English Language & Literature, University of Oxford

Courses Taught

  • C.S. Lewis and Imaginative Apologetics
  • Literature and Apologetics

Teaching Focus

Dr. Ward’s principal area of research is in theological imagination, particularly the intersection between narrative art and the expression of Christian experience and Christian doctrine.  Within this framework he has a special interest in theodicy.

Publications

Selected books

  • After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man (Word on Fire Academic, 2021)
  • C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner, edited with Peter S. Williams (Wipf & Stock, 2016)
  • The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis, edited with Robert MacSwain (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
  • Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008; paperback edition, 2010)
  • Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it Matters What Christians Believe, edited with Ben Quash (Hendrickson, 2007)

Selected essays

  • Planet Narnia Revisited’ in The Undiscovered C.S. Lewis: Essays in Memory of Christopher W. Mitchell, ed. Bruce R. Johnson (Winged Lion Press, 2021)
  • ‘An Experiment in Charity: C.S. Lewis on Love in the Literary Arts’ in The Inklings and Culture, ed. Monika B. Hilder et al (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020)
  • ‘Imagine There’s No Heaven? C.S. Lewis on Making Space for Faith’ in The Story of the Cosmos, ed. Paul Gould and Daniel Ray (Harvest House, 2019)
  • ‘Afterword’ in C.S. Lewis and His Circle: Essays and Memoirs from the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society, ed. R. White, J. Wolfe & B. Wolfe (Oxford University Press, 2015)
  • ‘Voyage to Venus’ in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos, ed. Judith Wolfe & Brendan Wolfe (Kent State University Press, 2013)
  • ‘The Tragedy is in the Pity: C.S. Lewis and the Song of the Goat’ in Christian Theology and Tragedy, ed. T. Kevin Taylor & Giles Waller (Ashgate, 2012)
  • ‘The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C.S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics’ in Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition, ed. Andrew Davison (SCM Press, 2011)
  • ‘C.S. Lewis’ in The Heart of Faith: Following Christ in the Church of England ed. Andrew Atherstone (Lutterworth, 2008)
  • ‘Christianity and Film’ in Christ and Culture in Dialogue, ed. Angus Menuge (Concordia Academic Press, 1999)

Other publications can be found listed at: www.michaelward.net

Awards and Honors

Dr. Ward has an Honorary Doctorate in Sacred Theology from Thorneloe University, Ontario (2021), and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Hillsdale College, Michigan (2015).  He received the 2011 Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies, given by the Mythopoeic Society, for his book Planet Narnia.

Additional Information

Dr. Ward lives in Oxford in his native England, but visits the United States frequently, where he has lectured in over thirty of the fifty states, including at the universities of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Chicago, and at the Library of Congress.  His articles have appeared on the cover of Christianity Today, Touchstone Magazine, and the Christian Research Journal.  He is an editorial board member of Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, The Journal of Inklings Studies, and Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal.  He presented the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code, made by the BAFTA-winning director, Norman Stone.  He serves on the Advisory Board of the Wade Center, Wheaton College, Illinois, and as chairman of the trustees of the G.K. Chesterton Library, Oxford, England.  On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Dr Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, London.