Sam Kocheri Clement

Assistant Professor

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My viewpoint on the Christian faith and its integration with knowledge and learning is best expressed by the words I composed in the acknowledgements for my PhD dissertation: “I realize and acknowledge that without God and his Providential care, I am near to nothing and whatever merit that you may find in this research is primarily due to his marvellous love. He reached out to me, showing me things I had to see and places I needed to go. Hence, I thank the Divine Providence that has been guiding, motivating, and inspiring me throughout this journey.” Even though my PhD research observed the missionary movement and Biblical dispersion in India with a critical eye, the Lord guided and directed my intention to seek answers for the many questions I have faced as a Christian and to prepare for new questions that I may face in the future. Striving to understand history from all dimensions helps us to have a more nuanced and balanced understanding of both past and present, thus avoiding the extreme positions often reached through a narrow or underdeveloped historical viewpoint. As a historian, especially a postcolonial historian, my endeavor is to search for and guide my students toward this balanced understanding of human events.

As argued by John Henny Newman, ‘the business of a university is to educate the intellect, to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it.’ After experiencing Houghton University for a few days, I was sure that the institution and its academic team were fully committed to that pursuit of truth while holding steadfast to the bedrock of faith in Christ. As a teacher and developing scholar, I find this Christ-centered academic environment very encouraging, as it will inspire me and my students to look deeper into questions in search of Truth, critically reason in all social and cultural matters, and stand up for faith, no matter the consequences.

Education

PhD in Postcolonial History | University of Birmingham | United Kingdom
MA in English Literature | St. Aloysius University, Karnataka | India
BA in English Literature | Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala | India

Courses Taught

Enduring Questions: Ancient & Medieval World
Special Topic: History of India I, 1000-1605

Awards

2023

Lund Mission Society funding for the project, “The Silent Missionary and the Submissive Slave: Bibles Printed and Circulated in the Caribbean, 1804–1904.”
Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation travel grant for the project, “The Silent Missionary and the Submissive Slave: Bibles Printed and Circulated in the Caribbean, 1804–1904.”

2022

Lund Mission Society research travel grant for the project, “The Silent Missionary and the Submissive Slave: Bibles Printed and Circulated in the Caribbean, 1804–1904.”
Crafoord Foundation funding for the project, “The Silent Missionary and the Submissive Slave: Bibles Printed and Circulated in the Caribbean, 1804–1904.”
Russell Berrie Fellowship in Interreligious Studies, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome. (Offer declined to join Lund University).

2021

Honorary Research Fellow, The Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, the University of Birmingham.

2016-2020

PhD funding from Tempio Trust, London, UK. (30,000 GBP)

2017 & 2020

Postgraduate Research Support Fund, College of Arts and Law, the University of Birmingham, UK

Lectures & Presentations

Selected Guest Lectures

“Re-examining Assumptions: An Enquiry on the Slave Bible of 1807”, Seminar, Intersectional Perspectives on the History of World Christianity, RethinC and CollECT, VID Specialised University, 30 May 2024.
“The Performative Role of Scripture in Colonial Agency”, Symposium, Manipulating Scriptures, Lund University, 13 October 2023.
“A Forgotten Community: The Latin Catholics of Kerala”, Symposium, Swedish South Asian Studies Network (SASNET), Lund University, 29 September 2023.
“England’s Book of Shame: The Slave Bible”, Concurrences Seminar Series in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, 21 September 2023.
“The Slave Bible,” a formal lecture organised by the Groupe de Recherche sur l’Eugénisme et le Racisme Université Paris Cité, UFR EILA, Paris, France, 9 June 2023.

Selected Paper Presentations

Imperial Outposts in Ruins: The Forgotten and Underexplored Imperial Forts in India” for Post/colonial Heritages: Creative Approaches to Understanding and Addressing Colonized Pasts, organised by the Enduring Materialities of Colonialism (‘EMoC’), Aarhus University, Denmark, 20-21 April 2023.
“Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missionary Education and the Performative Role of the Bible in India” for European Association for the Study of Religions Conference, organised by the Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions and The Study of Religions Department, University College Cork, 27 June—1 July 2022.
“Showcasing of the ‘Image’ined Colonies: Missionary Publications and Images from 19th Century India” for Showcasing Empires: The Legacy of Colonialism in Post-Imperial Societies, an international conference organised by the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 9-10 February 2021.
“The Silent Missionary: The Role of the Bible in the Cultural Conquest of India. 1804-1904,” University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, 18 November 2020.
“The Cultural Mine: The Bible” for Showcasing the Empire, an annual congress of the French Society for Victorian and Edwardian Studies (Société Française d’ Etudes Victoriennes et Edouardiennes, SFEVE) with international attendance, organised by the Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France, 20–22 February 2020.

Publications

2025 (Forthcoming)

Kocheri Clement, Sam Antony. “The 3 T’s and Scriptures: A Conceptual Umbrella for Discerning the Political Use of Scriptures” Biblical Reception: Models and Methods, Ed. Hannah Strommen, Bible and its Reception Series, SBL Press, Atlanta.

2024

Kocheri Clement, Sam Antony. “England’s Book of Shame: The Slave Bible. A Preface”, Seminar Proceedings, Groupe de Recherche sur l’Eugénisme et le Racisme, (GRER), Université Paris Cité, l’Harmattan, Paris (135-148) ISBN 978-2-336-42738-62023.

2023

Kocheri Clement, Sam Antony. “Engraved Stories: An Examination of Selected Images from the Missionary Register, 1813 – 1855.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2023.2262305

Research Interests

Church and Empire
Missionary History
Slavery and Bible
Material Culture