Margaret Lacey Jones (USA)

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MSt in Theology

I work on aura, decay, ecstasy, abjection – places where the aesthetic form imagines its own collapse, where a displaced sacred might be sublimated. And I write poetry.

At Oxford, I completed an MSt in Modern Theology. My dissertation project read Anne Sexton and Denise Levertov in order to find an aesthetically productive overlap between theopoetics and process theology. During the course of my degree, Ertegun House made it materially possible for me to host, alongside two of my fellow scholars, a panel discussion entitled Words in Action: Perspectives on Writing and Activism. Our event inspired me to think deeply about the intersection between creative and critical work and about my ethical responsibility as a writer and academic.

The Ertegun program gave me the opportunity to explore ways of researching and writing between literary, religious, and creative spaces. I am profoundly grateful for its resources and people.

Life After Ertegun House

I am currently a PhD student in Yale’s English Department, where I continue to work at the intersection of poetry, critical theory, and theology. I remain particularly interested in the way that formal and visual breakdown becomes its own form of representation. Together with Emily Cox, I help run the East Coast Ertegun alumni group in the US.

My time in the Ertegun House made me a more disciplined scholar, a broader thinker, and a more fervent reader. It is a once-in-a-lifetime place with the most incredible people, and I will be forever better for my experience there.