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Jolyon Mitchell is Professor of Communications, Arts and Religion and Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI) at the University of Edinburgh. His research and teaching interests include peacebuilding, violence and communications; history, theology and the arts; and media ethics.

Education and Media Career
Mitchell was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Durham and Edinburgh. Prior to working at the University of Edinburgh he was a producer and journalist for BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4.

Academic Career
Mitchell's publications reflect his wide range of interests and involvements. His first book, Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching, drew on original research from the UK and USA, exploring how preachers can learn from radio broadcasters. In 2007, Media Violence and Christian Ethics was published in Cambridge University Press' New Studies in Christian Ethics series. That book explored resources in Christian theology for helping audiences reflect critically on and respond peacefully to the presentation of violence in the media. Mitchell has a book on Martyrdom coming out in the Oxford University Press Very Short Introductions series, as well as a new research monograph entitled Promoting Peace, Inciting Violence: The Role of Media and Religion with Routledge. Mitchell has said in an interview that this book will examine the ambiguous role of media in both causing and preventing violence, and will contain studies of the First World War, Rwanda, the Iran-Iraq War, and other conflict situations.

Mitchell is the co-editor of the Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader (with Gordon Lynch and Anna Strhan), Religion and Film Reader (with S. Brent Plate), and Mediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Culture. (with Sophia Marriage). He also has an edited volume entitled Religion and the News (with Owen Gower) coming out on Ashgate.

In addition, Mitchell is the author of numerous academic articles in journals, edited volumes, and popular publications.

In 2010, Mitchell became the Director of the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI). CTPI is the oldest public theology research centre in the world and was founded by the leading practical theologian Duncan B. Forrester. During Mitchell's tenure as director of CTPI, he has launched several initiatives, including a three-year research project, Peacebuilding through Media Arts (PMA), that investigates the portrayal of religious violence in media arts and the use of media arts in peacebuilding efforts. Among other events and research projects, PMA put on a major art exhibition incorporating works from the Methodist Art Collection, Scottish artists, and an original edition King James Bible. Also in 2010, Mitchell named Dr George Wilkes as CTPI research fellow; Wilkes, formerly of Cambridge, brought his Project on Religion and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace to CTPI.

Mitchell is a life member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. He is the only British member of the International Study Commission on Media, Religion and Culture, which is 'a group of scholars and practitioners who have gathered to consider the shape and direction of both productive and reflective work in these three intersecting fields'. He has held a visiting professorship at Dartmouth College, and been a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne and the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Study at the University of Cambridge.