The Department of Religious Studies is delighted to announce that Norma Stewart has become oldest student to qualify for a doctorate at the University of Kent.
Rev. Norma Stewart, from Glasgow, who is 81 years old, studied for her PhD in Theology and Religious Studies under the supervision of Professor Yvonne Sherwood. Her thesis is entitled ‘A Critical Study of the “Settlement Narratives” in Judges 1-5 using Insights from Postcolonial Studies, to Consider the Relevance of These Texts for the Peoples of Israel/Palestine Today’, and is about the biblical conquest narratives in the politics of contemporary Israel/Palestine.
‘I started looking at the Hebrew passages – going into the history, into archaeology, to find out what on the surface seems to be saying the Canaanites were hated – I really tried to get the whole history of it,’ explained Norma. ‘The more I studied the old documents the more I believed much of the book of Deuteronomy was probably written in the 4th Century BC and therefore could not have been written by Moses who lived 1,200 years before that.‘
After she began her studies, Rev. Stewart faced major health problems beginning with a hip replacement and then cancer of the blood. She said that both disease and cure had exactly the same outcomes – chronic fatigue. She said everyone at Kent was ‘extremely understanding’ and paid tribute to the ‘sheer humanity of everyone there that I had dealings with’. In particular she described Yvonne’s supervision as ‘absolutely wonderful.’
Our congratulations to Rev. Dr Stewart.
Norma’s achievement has already been covered in the local press, with Kentnews reporting on the story here.
For more details on studying the PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, please see the page here: www.kent.ac.uk/secl/thrs/postgraduate/research-theology-and-religious-studies.html