Professor Gerald John Pillay is Vice-Chancellor & Rector of Liverpool Hope University. He has a DPhil in Philosophical Theology from Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. He was professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of South Africa for eight years during which time he was also a research fellow at Princeton University. In 1997 he became Foundation Professor and Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Otago University, New Zealand’s oldest University, where he also served as the first Head of Liberal Arts. He has served in various senior leadership roles at the University of South Africa, the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria and the University of Otago.

Professor Pillay has published extensively and served on the editorial boards of two international journals (Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae and Verbum et Ecclesia). He was elected a Life Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) in 2005, and received a commission to become a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Merseyside in 2009.