{"id":7950,"date":"2017-10-04T13:32:20","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T12:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/?p=7950"},"modified":"2017-10-04T21:29:09","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T20:29:09","slug":"religious-studies-doctoral-student-oldest-to-gain-phd-at-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2017\/10\/04\/religious-studies-doctoral-student-oldest-to-gain-phd-at-kent\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Studies doctoral student oldest to gain PhD at Kent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/index.html\">Department of Religious Studies<\/a> is delighted to announce that Norma Stewart has become oldest student to qualify for a doctorate at the University of Kent.<\/p>\n<p>Rev. Norma Stewart, from Glasgow, who is 81 years old, studied for her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/postgraduate\/research-theology-and-religious-studies.html\">PhD in Theology and Religious Studies<\/a> under the supervision of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/staff\/sherwood.html\">Professor Yvonne Sherwood<\/a>. Her thesis is entitled \u2018A Critical Study of the \u201cSettlement Narratives\u201d in Judges 1-5 using Insights from Postcolonial Studies, to Consider the Relevance of These Texts for the Peoples of Israel\/Palestine Today\u2019, and is about the biblical conquest narratives\u00a0in the politics of contemporary\u00a0Israel\/Palestine.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018I started looking at the Hebrew passages &#8211;\u00a0going into the history, into archaeology, to find out what on the surface seems to be saying the Canaanites were hated &#8211;\u00a0I really tried to get the whole history of it,\u2019 explained Norma. \u2018The 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.\u2018<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 chronic fatigue. She said everyone at Kent was \u2018extremely understanding\u2019 and paid tribute to the \u2018sheer humanity of everyone there that I had dealings with\u2019. In particular she described Yvonne\u2019s supervision as \u2018absolutely wonderful.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Our congratulations to Rev. Dr Stewart.<\/p>\n<p>Norma\u2019s achievement has already been covered in the local press, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentnews.co.uk\/home\">Kentnews<\/a> reporting on the story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentnews.co.uk\/news\/retired-church-minister-81-becomes-oldest-student-to-qualify-for-doctorate-at-university-of-kent-1-5220886\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For more details on studying the PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, please see the page here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/postgraduate\/research-theology-and-religious-studies.html\">www.kent.ac.uk\/secl\/thrs\/postgraduate\/research-theology-and-religious-studies.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/2017\/10\/04\/religious-studies-doctoral-student-oldest-to-gain-phd-at-kent\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2458,"featured_media":7951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,18581],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7959,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions\/7959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/secl-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}