Board of Directors
Richard Bell (Secretary)
Mr. Bell is an attorney-at-law with thirty-five years of practice experience. He served as a law professor for fourteen years at State University of New York, University of South Carolina, University of Akron, and Northwestern University, where his academic work concentrated in torts, evidence, and philosophy of law. His private practice has been concentrated in litigation defending religious liberties and in counseling not-for-profit corporations. Current scholarly research and writing focuses mainly on Christian ethics and Biblical theology. He is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church USA and attends First Presbyterian Church in Evanston, Illinois. He is a founding director and Secretary of the Global Faculty Initiative. He has a BA from Northwestern University; a JD and MA in philosophy from Yale University.
Mark Berner (Director)
Mr. Berner is an attorney, entrepreneur and a consultant to foundations and non-profits. Current activities include a venture-backed start-up whose goal is to reanimate the principles and practices of American republican democracy through the creative use of social media. He has served as a trustee and consultant to the three Templeton foundations and as an advisor to the McDonald Agape Foundation. Previously, he was a Managing Partner and Co-Founder of SDG Resources, L.P., an oil and gas company with operations in Texas and New Mexico funded by Goldman Sachs. Mr. Berner was also a partner in a Manhattan law firm and a principal in a hedge fund at Credit Suisse First Boston. He has served on a number of corporate, charitable, and religious boards. Mr. Berner has a BA from Yale, an MA from Oxford, and a JD from Villanova.
Terence Halliday (Convenor, President and Treasurer)
Terry Halliday is Research Professor Emeritus, American Bar Foundation; Honorary Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance, The Australian National University; and Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University. Terry studied at Massey University, New Zealand, and the University of Toronto. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He is the author and co-editor of ten books with the university presses of Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago and Stanford. His most recent authored books are Global Lawmakers: International Organizations in the Crafting of World Markets, with Susan Block-Lieb (Cambridge, 2017) and Criminal Justice in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work, with Sida Liu (Cambridge, 2016). He has published many articles in journals of sociology, law, and interdisciplinary sociolegal journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, European Journal of Sociology, Chicago Journal of International Law, Asian Journal of Law and Society, Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, and International Journal of Public Theology, among others. Halliday is current Editor of the International Book Essay section of Law and Social Inquiry. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Australian National University, and was a periodic visitor at Wolfson College, Oxford. Terry's public commentary on China has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Le Monde, among others, and he has testified before the U.S. Congress on legal rights in China. With Donald Hay (University of Oxford), Terry founded the Global Faculty Initiative which promotes the integration of Christian faith and academic disciplines in research universities worldwide. He is an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church USA.
Jennifer Herdt
Jennifer A. Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the Yale University Divinity School. She has published widely on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology, including Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well (OUP, 2022), Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (Chicago, 2018), and Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago, 2008). Several of her books have been selected as Choice Outstandinding Academic Titles, and her research has received support from the Humboldt Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. She served as the 2020 President of the Society of Christian Ethics, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Christian Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Religion. Current projects focus on more-than-human dimensions of ethical agency and theological anthropology in light of advances in artificial intelligence.
Michael Spence (Director)
Dr Spence is President & Provost of University College London. Prior to this he was Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Sydney, which under his leadership rose to first in Australia and fourth in the world for graduate employability. He was also responsible for the largest philanthropic campaign in Australian history, raising a record one billion Australian dollars. Dr Spence is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of intellectual property theory and holds a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he headed Oxford’s Law faculty and Social Sciences division. An alumnus of the University of Sydney, Dr Spence has a BA with first-class honours in English, Italian and Law. His other languages include Chinese and Korean. In 2017, he was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours for service to leadership of the tertiary education sector, to the advancement of equitable access to educational opportunities, to developing programmes focused on multidisciplinary research, and to the Anglican Church of Australia. Dr Spence is an ordained Minister in the Anglican Church.
K. .K. Yeo (Vice President)
Dr. Yeo is Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary Affiliate Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He was a Lilly Scholar (1999) and Henry Luce Scholar (2003), research later published respectively as Chairman Mao Meets the Apostle Paul (2002) and Musing with Confucius and Paul (2008). He has been an elected member of the Society of New Testament Studies (SNTS) since 1998, and a member of Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) since 1992. In the last thirty years, he has been a visiting professor in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and to major universities in China, and was the co-director, Center for Classical Greco-Roman Philosophy and Religious Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has authored or edited more than forty Chinese and English-language books on critical engagement between Bible and cultures, including co-editing the six-volume Eerdmans/Langham series on Majority World Theology (2014-2019) and its omnibus volume by IVP as Majority World Theology (2020). He is author of What Has Jerusalem to Do with Beijing? (2nd edition, 2018), editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in China (Oxford University Press, 2021), Theologies of Land: Contested Land, Spatial Justice, and Identity (Cascade, 2021), and Scripture, Cultures, and Criticism: Interpretive Steps and Critical Issues Raised by Robert Jewett (Pickwick, 2022).
Advisory Board
Donald Hay
Donald Hay was an active member of the University of Oxford Department of Economics 1970-2000. His research interests included applied industrial economics, and the interface between Christian ethics and economics. His published work included one of the first papers on strategic entry deterrence in spatial markets, a paper on the impact on manufacturing firms of the Brazilian trade liberalization, a monograph (with Derek Morris, Shujie Yao, and Guy Liu) on the effects of market liberalization on Chinese manufacturing firms, and a book on Christianity and economics. He also maintained an interest in the reform of competition policy in the UK. He taught microeconomics, industrial organization (at both graduate and undergraduate level), and supervised several doctoral theses in industrial economics. He published, with Derek Morris, an advanced textbook, Industrial Economics and Organisation: Theory and Evidence (second edition, 1991). In 2000 he became the first Head of the Division of Social Sciences in the University, a position he held for five years. He acted as Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources 2006-7, and was responsible for the implementation of the University Resource Allocation System (the JRAM) in 2009. Since 2009 he has been fully retired. His main interest in retirement has been the development of a program, Developing a Christian Mind, to enable Christian graduate students, researchers and academics (across all disciplines) to begin to integrate their faith and their academic activities. He has been a founding Co-Convenor of the Global Faculty Initiative.
Riad Kassis
Riad Kassis is a Langham Scholar from Lebanon and is deeply committed to global theological education. He has served as International Director of the International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE), Regional Director for Overseas Council, as well as visiting professor of Old Testament at The Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and Near East School of Theology in Beirut, and the Dean of the Program for Theological Education by Extension in Syria and Lebanon.
Riad obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Economics in Damascus, Syria. He went on to obtain his Master of Divinity from Alliance Biblical Seminary, Manila, Philippines and Master of Theology from Regent College, Canada. Riad received his Doctor of Philosophy in Old Testament as a Langham scholar from The University of Nottingham, UK and his Master of Nonprofit Management from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.
Dinesha Samararatne
Dinesha Samararatne is a Professor at the Department of Public & International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her research interests include judicial review, public participation in constitution-making, constitutional resilience, women and constitutional law, fourth branch institutions and the relevance of the global south in comparative constitutional law. Dinesha has published widely. Dinesha is a Senior Fellow and Co-Convenor of Constitution Transformation Network (CTN) of the Melbourne Law School, Australia. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Indian Law Review. In 2023 she was appointed as an independent expert to the Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka. Dinesha is a LLB graduate from the University of Colombo and an Attorney-at-Law. She read for her Master’s degree as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Law School, MA, USA and she completed her doctoral studies at the University of Colombo. Dinesha has previously been affiliated with the Centre on Comparative Constitutional Law as a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow (April – May 2018) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow (2019 - 2020).
Fr. Thomas Joseph White
Fr. Thomas Joseph White is the Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in Rome. Originally a native of southeastern Georgia in the US, Fr. White studied at Brown University, where he converted to Catholicism. He did his doctoral studies in theology at Oxford University, and is the author of various books and articles including Wisdom in the Face of Modernity, A Thomistic Study in Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2016), The Incarnate Lord, A Thomistic Study in Christology (The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Catholic University of America Press, 2022), Principles of Catholic Theology Book III: On God, Trinity, Creation, and Christ (Catholic University of America Press, 2024) and Contemplation and the Cross (The Catholic University of America Press, 2025). With Matthew Levering he is the co-editor of the academic journal Nova et Vetera. In 2011 he was appointed an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and in 2019 was named a Distinguished Scholar of the McDonald Agape Foundation. He held the 2018-2019 McInnes Chair for theological inquiry at the Angelicum. In 2022, he was granted an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of America, and in 2023 he was elected President of the Academy of Catholic Theology. In 2023, Fr. White was also awarded the title Master of Sacred Theology, one of the highest academic awards in the Dominican Order.