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A professor in practical theology and pastoral care at the University of Aberdeen,
John Swinton is an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland who for more than a decade worked as a registered nurse specializing in psychiatry and learning disabilities. He also has been a hospital chaplain. Trained in nursing at the Royal Cornhill Hospital, Aberdeen, Dr. Swinton began his career as a staff nurse at Woodlands Hospital, Aberdeen, in 1983 and became charge nurse two years later. He undertook studies in divinity at Aberdeen University in 1990, earning his bachelor’s degree with first class honors in 1994 and his Ph.D. in 1997. Appointed a lecturer in practical theology first at the University of Glasgow and then at Aberdeen, he was named to his present position in 2003. He also serves as an honorary professor and researcher at the Aberdeen’s Centre for Advanced Studies in Nursing. His work, which currently focuses on the importance of spirituality for mainstream mental health care practice, has been funded by Waterstone Trust, the British Academy, the John Templeton Foundation, the Scottish Executive, and the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities. The editor of Contact: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Pastoral Studies, Dr. Swinton was the founding editor of the Scottish Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy and continues to serve on the editorial board of the journal, as well as on the boards of the American Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy and the Journal of Religion, Disability and Health. The author not only of articles in health care and theology journals and of essays in collected volumes, he also has written four books. His most recent, Spirituality in Mental Health Care: Rediscovering a “Forgotten” Dimension, was published by Jessica Kingsley in 2001 as the first book in the new series on practical theology that Dr. Swinton is editing for the publisher. The second of two books he has co-edited, Disabling Society, Enabling Theology: Critical Reflections on Stanley Hauerwas’ Essays on Disability (with Stanley Hauerwas), will be published later this year by Haworth Press.
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