Skip to content Exit mobile menu

Deacon Dr Harry Schnitker

Senior Lecturer in Church History

Deacon Dr Harry Schnitker

About Research

Email: harry.schnitker@stmarys.ac.uk

Biography

Deacon Dr Harry Schnitker (Senior Lecturer in Church History) is the Programme Director of the Maryvale@StMary’s PhD (part time, distance learning), as well as the Director of the St John Henry Newman Research Centre at the Maryvale Higher Institute of Religious Sciences in Birmingham.

Born in the Netherlands, he has lived in Britain for most of his life and is a Permanent Deacon working in the Diocese of Aberdeen where he serves in the largest geographical parish in the British Isles; he is also an Oblate with the Bridgittine Order.

He joined St Mary’s University in 2024 after helping to create a new home at the University for the Maryvale distance learning PhD, MA and BA Catholic Theology and Philosophy programmes. He previously taught at Edinburgh University, Glasgow University and Maryvale Institute and worked as a Prison Chaplain in the Scottish Prison Service for many years, including a period as the Senior Chaplaincy Advisor. He is an Associate Member of the St Andrew’s Foundation at Glasgow University.

Dr Schnitker welcomes enquiries about the part-time, distance learning PhD programme Maryvale@StMary’s and offers a Zoom conversation with potential students.


Research

Research profile

Publications

Books
  • Jacobite Duchesses: The Duchesses of Perth from the House of Drummond. Women, War and Enlightenment During the Jacobite Era (Cambridge Scholars, 2024).
  • Knowles, Catherine, Briliute, Birute and Schnitker, Harry, Aspects of Doctoral Research at the Maryvale International Catholic Institute (Volume Four) (Cambridge Scholars, 2023).
  • Orr, Sheena, Ajmal, Mohammed, Taylor, Bill and Schnitker, Harry, Chaplaincy in the Scottish Prison Service, (SPS, 2018).
  • Mills,Mary, Schnitker, Harry and Orr, John (eds), Maryvale Miscellanea I: Context andIdeas in Laudato Si’ (Cambridge Scholars, 2017).
  • Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy. Religion and Power in the Fifteenth Century (Richard III Society Research Monologues, vol.1, Richard III Society Monographs, 2016).
  • Péporté, Pit, Lee, Alexander and Schnitker, Harry (eds), Renaissance? Continuity and Discontinuity in Europe, Brill, Leiden, 2010.The Scottish Catholic Experience as seen from Perth, 1685-2007, 2 volumes. (Cortes Press, Edinburgh, 2007).
  • De Smedt, Raphael and Schnitker, Harry (eds), Identiteit en status ten tijde van de Bourgondische Hertogen, (Mechelen, 2001).
Major articles
  • “Maryvale House and Maryvale Institute: Sacred Space and Identity”, in Knowles, Catherine, Briliute, Birute and Schnitker, Harry (eds.) Aspects of Doctoral Research at the Maryvale International Catholic Institute, Volume Four, (Cambridge Scholars, 2023), pp. 2-16.
  • “Evidence for Late Medieval ‘Permanent’ Deacons”, New Diaconal Review, 2020.
  • “The Historical Ideas of Laudato Si’, In Mills, Mary, Schnitker, Harry Orr, John (eds), Maryvale Miscellanea I: Context and Ideas in Laudato Si’ (Cambridge Scholars, 2017).
  • “Anglo-Saxon Deacons and the Continental Mission”, New Diaconal Review, vol. 10, May 2013, pp. 37-41.
  • “The Christian Church Opposed the Social Darwinism that Fed Nazi Anti-Semitism”, In Berlatsky, Noah, Anti-Semitism, (New York, 2013) pp. 61-67.
  • “Multiple Memories: Pierre de Vaux’s Vie de Saint Colette, Burgundy and the Church”, Publication du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe s.), no. 52, 2012, pp. 149-162.
  • Armeens-Katholieke Kerk, online Katholieke Encyclopedie, RKK, 2009.
  • Aartsbisschop Ignatius Maloyan, online Katholieke Encyclopedie, RKK, 2009.
  • “Reliquary in the Form of a Calvary”, In Eichberger, Dagmar and others, Women of Distinction, Margaret of York/Margaret of Austria, (Leuven, 2005) pp. 317-8.
  • “The Recuyll of the Historyes of Troye”. In Eichberger, Dagmar and others, Women of Distinction, Margaret of York/Margaret of Austria, (Leuven, 2005) pp. 242-3.
  • “Margaret of York on Pilgrimage: The Exercise of Devotion and the Religious Traditions of the House of York”, In Biggs, Douglas, Michalove, Sharon and Reeves, Compton (eds), Reputation and Representation in Fifteenth-Century Europe, (Leiden, 2004) pp. 81-122.
  • “‘Een bibliotheek ontsloten.’ Nieuw licht op de boekerij van Margaretha van York”, In De Win, Paul (ed), Wijsheid in bescheidenheid. Miscellanea Mechliniensia in honorem Aloysii Jans, (Mechelen, 2002) pp. 265-88.
  • “Margaretha van York en Cecily Neville: politiek en heiligenverering, Mechelen en East Anglia”, In De Smedt, Raphael and Schnitker, Harry (eds), Identiteit en status ten tijde van de Bourgondische Hertogen, (Mechelen, 2001) pp. 83-96.
  • “‘Wat mi die edel minne gheeft, dat sel ic gaerne draghen’: Spiritual Heroism in Burgundian Dutch Literature”, Publication du Centre Européen d’Études Bourguignonnes (XIVe-XVIe s.), no. 41, 2001, pp. 199-210.

Media

Dr Schnitker has published widely in Catholic media, including Catholic News Agency, The Scottish Catholic Observer, the Dutch Catholic news agency RKK-KRO and EWTN. He advises and is editor for Darton, Longman and Todd and Scotland Street Publishing on aspects of Church History and has presented often on Radio Maria.

Current areas of research and PhD supervision include:

  • Scottish Catholic Church History
  • The Historical Position of Women in Catholic communities
  • Female Religious Life
  • African Catholic Church History, especially inculturation
  • History of Ideas, Intellectual History and Identity History
  • Art History and the Church
  • Byzantine and Medieval Church History
  • Romanticism and the Neo-Gothic Imagination
  • Inter-Faith studies.

Current PhD students

  • Fr Harrison Ayre, The Sacramental Vision of Ratzingetr’s Anthropology
  • Carlos Taja, A Study on the Relationship between Faith and Piety in Bonaventure’s Breviloquium and Collations on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
  • Mike Hanley, The anointing of King Pepin in 751 as the line of demarcation between antiquity and the Middle Ages
  • Fr Innocent Abonyi, The Biafran War, the Holy Ghost Fathers, and International Relief
  • Matthew Weller, Identity of the Members of the Military Religious Orders in the British Isles, 1200-1500
  • Louise Joyner, Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Sacred Art as an Instrument of Ascent to God through the Senses
  • Fr Johappa Tulimelli¸ The Eucharist as the Source of Union with God in Catholicism and Hinduism.

Completed PhD students

  • Dr Ausra Cane, New Sacred Space in Belgium: The Chapel of Disclosure
  • Dr Diana Golubecka, Bishop Boļeslavs Sloskāns: Faith, Identity and legacy 1893-1993
  • Deacon Dr Robert Rice, Revisiting the Vision: A Critique of How Evangelisation was Articulated in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Framework for Catholic Youth Ministry (Renewing the Vision, 1997) in Light of Related Magisterial Documents and the History of Catholic Youth Ministry in the United State
  • Dr Sr. Eleanor Gibson FMA, Between Worlds: Communicating the Catholic Faith to Young People in the Archdiocese of Nairobi
  • Dr Ryan Hanning, The Catechetical Works of Moghila and the Exchange of Ideas Between Latin West and Orthodox East
  • Rev Dr John Orr, The Development of the Use Reason in Karol Wojtyla and its Influence in John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio.

Media enquiries

For media enquiries, please contact our Press Office Team by emailing press.office@stmarys.ac.uk.