Professor Jolyon Mitchell
Principal of St John’s College, Durham
Professor Jolyon Mitchell is Principal of St John’s College, Durham, and a Professor of Peacebuilding at Durham University. He specialises in religion, violence and peacebuilding, with reference to the arts and media.
Educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Durham and Edinburgh, Jolyon worked as a producer and journalist with BBC World Service and Radio 4 before moving to the University of Edinburgh, where he served as Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues, and Academic Director for the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities. He is a former president of the national association for Theology and Religious Studies in the UK.
Jolyon has also served on international film juries at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals. He directs several projects on peacebuilding, including one which led to a widely-used volume, Peacebuilding and the Arts (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). He has also worked with Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, as well as Palestinian and Israeli journalists, on a peace building project in Jerusalem and beyond.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a life member of Clare Hall, at the University of Cambridge.
Virtual lectures
Jolyon is available to deliver his lectures online, via Zoom or streaming. Please ask about this option when making your booking.
Publications
Jolyon is the author or editor of over a dozen books, as well as many chapters and articles. He is currently completing a new book: A Passion for Performance: The mysterious resurgence of religious drama (OUP, 2027).
Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Religion and Peace (Wiley Blackwell, 2022)
Religion and War: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2021)
Promoting Peace and Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (Routledge, 2012)
Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012)
Media Violence and Christian Ethics (CUP, 2007)
His co-edited books include:
Peacebuilding and the Arts (Palgrave MacMillan 2020)
Religion and the News (Ashgate 2012)
The Religion and Film Reader (Routledge 2007)
Mediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Culture (Continuum, 2003)
His lectures build upon original research undertaken for these and other publications.
Further information
For further information, please visit:
TEDx Talk: Published on April 20, 2015 - Jolyon takes a look at the relationship between art and warfare, using his experience as a BBC journalist as inspiration. In this thought provoking talk he explores how the perspective with which we view something can change its very nature.
