Dr Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer is the Director of Stakeholder Relations for the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy and a researcher in the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at ACU’s Melbourne Campus. He also coordinates and teaches in the Graduate Certificate in Leadership and Catholic Culture.

Dr Jacobs-Vandeegeer earned his doctorate in theology from the University of St Michael’s College in Toronto before joining ACU in 2011. He has published articles in international journals and with Professor Neil Ormerod published Foundational Theology: A New Approach to Catholic Fundamental Theology (Fortress Press, 2015). He is a chief investigator in a major research program titled, Atheism and Christianity: Moving Past Polemic.

Dr Jacobs-Vandegeer’s primary areas of research interest are fundamental theology, the theology of grace, interreligious dialogue, and the thought of Bernard J F Lonergan.

Dr Gemma Tulud Cruz taught for several years in the Philippines and in the United States before moving to ACU. Dr Cruz’s research expertise and ongoing research interest is on migration theologies. She is the author of a number of publications on the topic including Toward a Theology of Migration: Social Justice and Religious Experience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and An Intercultural Theology of Migration: Pilgrims in the Wilderness (Leiden: Brill, 2010). She has also taught twice a class on Migrants and Refugees at Radboud University in the Netherlands as part of an Erasmus Higher Education Staff Mobility grant.

Dr Cruz is currently involved in research on gender and Christian mission. The results of this research will be published as a book chapter in Oxford University Press' Handbook of Mission Studies. She is also coordinator of a project on migration and mission that is funded by the Pontifical Missionary Union (PMU). The project involves an experts' seminar at PMU's centre in the Vatican.