Tina Beattie

Beattie is the eldest of three daughters born to Charlie and Nan Bell. She was born in 1955 in Zambia and lived there for eighteen years, attending the Dominican Convent School in Lusaka. Beattie also lived for several years in Kenya and Zimbabwe. She is married to Dave Beattie, and worked as a secretary before the birth of their four children (born in 1978, 1980, 1983, and 1986). In 1986, or 1987, she converted to Roman Catholicism from Presbyterianism. After moving to Bristol with her family in 1988, she became a mature student at the University of Bristol in 1991, where she received a first class honours degree in theology and religious studies before completing a PhD on the theology and symbolism of the Virgin Mary, viewed in a "gynocentric" light in engagement with the ideas of Luce Irigaray. Since then, she has lectured at the University of Bristol and Wesley College, Bristol and has also taught for the Open University. She took up a full-time post at the University of Roehampton in 2002. Her teaching interests include Christian mysticism and spirituality; theology, art and culture; moral theology and Catholic social teaching, and religion and human rights.