Dr Tanya Riches completed her PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary supervised by Professor Bryant Myers. Her interdisciplinary project with Aboriginal Pentecostal leaders (located at the intersection of development studies, anthropology, and Pentecostal theology) won the David Allan Hubbard Award from the School of Intercultural Studies. Her monograph entitled Worship and Social Engagement in Urban Aboriginal-led Australian Pentecostal Congregations was published in 2019 with Brill. It investigated links between urban Aboriginal-led congregations’ worship practices and their social justice initiatives.

From 2017- 2022, Tanya was Senior Lecturer and MTh program coordinator at Hillsong College, accredited with Alphacrucis College. Before that, she worked at the Centre for Disability Studies (an affiliate centre of The University of Sydney) where she managed many projects and facilitated the inclusive research network, a group of researchers with intellectual disabilities, their carers, and university staff.

She is an honorary research fellow of the Edward Cadbury Centre for Public Understanding of Religion at The University of Birmingham as well as the Christian Research Association. She lives in Sydney with her husband Tim and her two little boys Ignatius and Manfred. She loves a conversation over good coffee and has acquired a large collection of house plants since covid.

Qualifications

• PhD in Intercultural Studies Theology/Development/Anthropology 2017, Fuller Theological Seminary California, USA
• MPhil Theology/Music, Australian Catholic University
• Masters of Arts in Christian Studies Theology, Alphacrucis College
• Bachelor of Arts Political Economy/Psychology, The University of Sydney

Affiliations

• Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Edward Cadbury Centre, University of Birmingham, UK.
• Honorary Research Fellow, Christian Research Association
• NCLS Australia Research Subcommittee
• Board of Pneuma: Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies

Publications

• Riches, T. (2022). On the Nature of Ordering. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Theology and Qualitative Research (eds P. Ward and K. Tveitereid), 101-110. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119756927.ch11
• Riches, T. (2022). “Nevertheless, She Persisted: Freeing Women’s Bodies from Silent Theological Sacrifice Zones.” In Sisters, Mothers, Daughters: Pentecostal Perspectives on Violence against Women (eds K.E. Alexander, M.L. Archer, M.J. Cartledge, and M.D. Palmer). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 49–68. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004513204_005
• Anga’aelangi, T. and Riches, T. (2021) “Worship and Spirituality” in Christianity in Oceania (eds K. Ross, K.Tahaafe-Williams, and T.M. Johnson). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 247-258. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474480109
• Low, U.-W., & Riches, T. (2021). Guest Editorial: The Spirit’s Voice from the Margin: Disentangling Australasian Pentecostalism from White Hegemony. Australasian Pentecostal Studies, 22(2), 144–148. Retrieved from https://www.aps-journal.com/index.php/APS/article/view/9587
• Riches, T. (2021) “‘Wisdom Cries Out’: Towards a Feminist Pentecostal Theology of (Dis)ability” in Grounded in the Body, in Time and Place, in Scripture: Papers by Australian Women Scholars in the Evangelical Tradition. United States: Wipf & Stock Publishers.

Presentations

• “This Is My Body’: Addressing Global Violence Against Women. SPS Annual Meeting. Online. March 19th, 2021.
• “An Embedded Australian Pentecostalism” Beyond the Divide: Spiritual Education Across Faiths and Cultures. Alphacrucis University College/Online. 7th July 2021.
• “‘Nevertheless, She Persisted’: Freeing Women’s Bodies from the Silent Theological ‘Sacrifice Zone’” SSSR. Women, Religion, and Global Advocacy Group. October 16th 2021.
• Riches, T., Taylor, D., and Jessep, S.. “Tensions of Community and Belonging in a Service-Provider Landscape.” Inclusion: Creating Spaces of Belonging into the Future. L’Arche Australia 40th Anniversary Conference. AlphaCrucis College, Parramatta. February 7th 2019.
• O’Brien, Patricia, Doukas, Thomas and Tanya Riches. “Quality Checking – Taking Back Control of Accommodation Services” in Journal of Intellectual Disability Research. 63 no. 7 (2019): 844

Academia.edu
https://melbschooltheol.academia.edu/TanyaRiches

Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=mcT–DcAAAAJ&hl=en