Professor Mark Brett teaches Hebrew Bible and ethics at Whitley College and is in regular demand as a Higher Degree by Research supervisor and examiner. He was raised in Papua New Guinea, which has yielded a lifelong interest in the cultural contexts of education and biblical studies.
Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland, a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton (USA), and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Sheffield (UK). His PhD on hermeneutical philosophy was published as Biblical Criticism in Crisis? (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and his subsequent research has focused on ethnicity and postcolonial studies. Mark’s work is concerned with the intersection between religion and politics in contemporary Australia and the South Pacific, and the lifting up of indigenous theological voices.
Alongside his academic career, from 2005-2008 Mark also worked as a Policy Officer for Aboriginal organisation, Native Title Services Victoria, during which time he assisted with the development of new frameworks for the negotiation of native title claims within the state of Victoria. He was a member of the Secretariat for the 2008 negotiations with the Victorian State Government, yielding the Settlement Framework in 2009 which formed the basis of the Victorian Traditional Owner Settlement Act (2010).
Mark has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including five years (1992–1996) as an executive editor of the interdisciplinary journal Biblical Interpretation. In 2019 he became the first non-North-American to be appointed as General Editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature. His most recent book is Locations of God: Political Theology in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Mark is a member of Brunswick Baptist Church.
University Appointments
- Professor of Hebrew Bible
Whitley College
Teaching disciplines
Old TestamentResearch areas
Recent Publications
All publicationsExternal Affiliations
- Australian Academy of the Humanities (Fellow)
- Journal of Biblical Literature (General Editor)