Glen O’Brien is a Uniting Church minister in the Yarra Yarra Presbytery with a placement to full time theological education in The Salvation Army. He is a Professor of the University and Research Coordinator at Eva Burrows College where he lectures in Christian History and Theology, specialising in Wesleyan studies. He is the author of John Wesley’s Political World (London: Routledge, 2023), Wesleyan-Holiness Churches in Australia: Hallelujah under the Southern Cross (London: Routledge, 2018) and editor and contributor to (with Hilary Carey of the University of Bristol), Methodism in Australia: A History (Farnham, Surrey and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015).

Glen is the Chair of Examiners of the University of Divinity. He is a member of the Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission and a Board Member of the International Association of Methodist Schools, Colleges, and Universities (IAMSCU). He is also a member of the University of Divinity’s Religion and Social Policy Network, Past Vice-President of the Religious History Association, Past President of the Uniting Church National History Society, a Research Fellow of the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research, an Honorary Fellow of the Manchester (UK) Wesley Research Centre, Member of the Australian Historical Association, and Member of the American Academy of Religion.

A graduate of Kingsley College (Bachelor Theology and Master of Arts in Biblical Studies), Asbury Theological Seminary (Master of Arts Theological Studies) and La Trobe University (PhD in history), Glen has engaged in postdoctoral research on John Wesley’s political writings at Duke Divinity School (2011), Asbury Theological Seminary (2013), and Oxford Brookes University (2014). He continued that research as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Manchester Wesley Research Centre for six weeks in the summer of 2015, and was elected a Member of the Oxford Institute for Methodist Theological Studies in 2013 and 2018.

He has published widely on Wesleyan and Methodist themes and has an international reputation in the field of Wesleyan and Methodist studies evidenced by frequent invitation to contribute to conferences, symposia, and peer review of Methodist scholarship. His publications include two volumes in the Ashgate Methodist Studies Series, many articles and book reviews in scholarly journals including The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, The Journal of Religious History, Methodist Review, Wesley and Methodist Studies, and the Wesleyan Theological Journal, as well as contributing numerous chapters to edited collections. He is also the editor of The Journal of Wesleyan Thought (formerly Aldersgate Papers) the peer-reviewed journal of the Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research and a member of the editorial board of the international journal Wesley and Methodist Studies.

Glen has offered expert commentary on ABC Radio on numerous occasions and is actively involved in the Uniting Church, having been a contributing member of several Vic-Tas Synods and of the 15th Assembly (2018). He is a member of the Mernda (UCA) congregation and regularly takes services there and in three other Uniting Church congregations. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Mernda Neighbourhood House. He has been a member of the Yarra Yarra Presbytery Standing Committee, participated in the Assembly’s Christian Unity Working Group and The Salvation Army/Uniting Church Dialogue, and the Assembly’s Continuing Witness Task Group.

University Appointments

Research Coordinator (Eva Burrows College)

External Affiliations

• Australasian Centre for Wesleyan Research (Research Fellow)
• Manchester Wesley Research Centre (Honorary Research Fellow)
• Uniting Church National History Society (President)
• Religious History Association (Vice-President)
• Journal of Wesleyan Thought (Editor)
• American Academy of Religion (Member)
• Australian Historical Acssociation (Member)