Ko Ngongotaha te maunga. Ko Rotorua te awa. Ko Ngāti Pākehā te iwi. No Aotearoa ahau.

Rosemary Dewerse is a practical theologian from Aotearoa New Zealand who is currently Academic Dean and Research Coordinator at the Uniting College for Leadership and Theology (UCLT) in Adelaide. She has taught in a range of areas from missional leadership and innovation to intercultural engagement, spiritual formation, contextual theology, hermeneutics and church history in colleges in New Zealand, Australia and Central Asia, while also supporting distance and online theological education in the United Kingdom and Jordan. Rosemary’s PhD explored what genuinely intercultural theological education would require and was published, rewritten for faith communities, as Breaking Calabashes: Becoming an Intercultural Community.

Alongside being passionate about teaching, Rosemary enjoys the privilege of supervising theses, seeing a number through to successful completion, particularly in areas of practical theology and ministry, all employing a range of qualitative methodologies. Meanwhile, a majority of her recent research, published as articles, books and chapters has been written collaboratively or to support the publishing of indigenous and emerging voices. Examples include Yarta Wandatha and Anaditj with Rev Dr Aunty Denise Champion (Adnyamathanha), two articles on a Māori approach to addressing intergenerational trauma with Fay Pouesi (Ngāruahine, Te Atiawa), a chapter critiquing the impact of Christian mission on indigenous women in the Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies with Gina Colvin (Ngāti Porou), edited books such as Mission From, In and With the Margins of Our Diverse World with Darren Cronshaw, and an article and three book chapters on innovation in theological education with Steve Taylor. A current collaborative writing project is documenting the first regional application of Regenerative Practice to a church community as an approach to renewal.

Rosemary loves making music and enjoys learning about and supporting indigenous/local artists, as well as long walks and cycling in beautiful places.

University Appointments

Academic Dean (Uniting College for Leadership and Theology)