Michael O’Connor

Michael O’Connor is Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Christianity and Culture program and Book and Media Studies. Since 2022 he has held the W. J. Bennett Family Chair of Christianity and the Arts.

His research interests include Christianity and the arts, music and liturgy, and early modern intellectual history (especially Renaissance Rome). Recent courses have included “Ritual and Worship” and the First Year Foundations Seminar “The Sistine Chapel: History, Image, Use.” In 2024, he took on the Gilson Seminar in Faith and Ideas.

Professor O’Connor was the founding director of the St. Michael’s Schola Cantorum and the college Singing Club. A former board member of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music and the Royal School of Church Music, Canada, he is also active as an occasional composer, arranger, and music editor.

He arrived at the University of St. Michael’s College in 2005. He formerly served as Warden of the Royal School of Church Music, UK, and as Lecturer in Theology, Ushaw College, UK. Professor O’Connor holds degrees from Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome (STB, STL), and Oxford, Oriel College (DPhil).

  • Areas of Expertise
    • Christianity and the arts
    • Music and liturgy
    • Early modern intellectual history
    • Renaissance-era Rome
    • History of Biblical exegesis
    • History of Christianity
  • Selected Publications

    “Music, Breath, Spirit,” in George Corbett and Sarah Moerman, eds., Music and Spirituality: Theological Approaches, Empirical Methods, and Christian Worship (Open Book, 2024), 55–71.

    “‘Singing Without Understanding’: The Defence of the Unintelligible in Lefèvre d’Etaples,” in Hyun-Ah Kim, ed., Music and Religious Reformation in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 35–53.

    “Epilogue: Singing Worlds in the Americas” in Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, eds., Christian Sacred Music in the Americas (Lanham MD: Lexington, 2021), 329–37.

    “Hymns, Songs, and the Pursuit of Freedom,” in Jeremy Begbie, Daniel Chua, Markus Rathey, eds., Music, Theology, and Modernity (Oxford: OUP, 2021), 217–44.

    Music, Theology, and Justice, co-edited with Hyun-Ah Kim and Christina Labriola (Lanham: Lexington, 2017).

    Cajetan’s Biblical Commentaries: Motive and Method (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

    “The Liturgical Use of the Organ in the Sixteenth Century: the Judgments of Cajetan and the Dominican Order,” Religions 5, no. 3 (2014): 751–766.

    “The Singing of Jesus,” in Jeremy Begbie and Steven Guthrie, eds., Resonant Witness. Conversations between Music and Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 434–53.

  • Education

    DPhil — Oriel College, University of Oxford, UK

    Licentiate of Sacred Theology — Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy

    Bachelor of Sacred Theology — Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy