Dr Alison Gray
Tutor in Old Testament Language, Literature & Theology

Email: via the Tutorial Office tutorial@westminster.cam.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 1223 330649

Alison Gray is the Director of Studies and Tutor in Old Testament Language, Literature & Theology. She has worked in the Cambridge Theological Federation since 2014, teaching Biblical Hebrew, exegesis and interpretation, as well as Adult Education and Discipleship. She supervises students up to doctoral level and is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Cambridge Faculty of Divinity. She has a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the Institute of Continuing Education (University of Cambridge) and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). Alison is passionate about bringing biblical texts to life, and established Westminster’s Winter School in Ancient and Biblical Languages (https://www.westminster.cam.ac.uk/biblical-languages). She is also a mentor, coach and supervisor, and is currently creating a course in coaching skills for ministry.
Alison is a Lay Preacher and an Elder in her local URC church in Fulbourn. Alison studied Theology & Religious Studies at Cambridge University, where she completed her BA, before training to be a secondary school teacher in R.E. She later returned to Cambridge to complete her MPhil in Old Testament and PhD on Hebrew metaphors in the Psalms.
Alison’s research interests include Ancient Hebrew semantics and Cognitive Linguistics (Lexicography, Translation and Metaphor); Reception Studies of the Bible (particularly in art and the performing arts); and Interdisciplinary Studies with Psychology and Pedagogical Research (e.g. Job as trauma literature and trauma-informed pedagogy). She is also involved in the British Sign Language Bible Translation Project https://bslbible.org.uk/.

Publications include

  • ‘g’l’ in H – J Fabry and U. Dahmen (eds.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zu den Qumrantexten 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011).
  • Psalm 18 in Words and Pictures: A Reading Through Metaphor (Biblical Interpretation Series 127; Leiden: Brill, 2014).
  • ‘pdh’ in H-J. Fabry and U.Dahmen (eds.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zu den Qumrantexten 3 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016).
  • ‘Reception of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible’ in J. Barton (ed.), The Old Testament: A Princeton Guide (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016).
  • ‘Reflections on the Meaning(s) of ‘yr in the Hebrew Bible’ for H. Marlow and J Aitken (eds.), The City in the Hebrew Bible (LHBOTS, 2016).
  • “Hear the Metaphors that I am Commanding You Today! The Affective Dimension of Metaphor Clusters in Deuteronomy 4”, in Danilo Verde and Antje Labahn, eds. Networks of Metaphors in the Hebrew Bible (BETL 309; Leuven, Peeters, 2020).
  • “Re-imag(in)ing or Distorting Texts? ‘Image-fields’, and the multi-valent ‘bow’ in Psalm 18.35”, in Ryan Bonfiglio, Brent Strawn & Joel LeMon (eds.), Through the Eyes of the Ancient Near East: Othmar Keel’s Symbolism of the Biblical World 50 Years Later (Eisenbrauns, forthcoming)