Professor Jolyon Mitchell is Principal of St John’s College, Durham and a Professor of Peacebuilding at Durham University who specialises in Religion, Violence and Peacebuilding, with reference to the arts and media. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Durham and Edinburgh, Professor Mitchell worked as a producer and journalist with the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4 before moving to the University of Edinburgh, where he served as Director of CTPI (the Centre for Theology and Public Issues) and Academic Director for IASH. He is a former President of TRS-UK (2012-2018 - the national association for Theology and Religious Studies in the UK).
He is author or editor of over a dozen books, as well as many chapters and articles, including Promoting Peace and Inciting Violence: The Role of Religion and Media (Routledge, 2012); Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012); Religion and War: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2021), Religion and Peace (Wiley Blackwell, 2022), Picturing Peace: Photography, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding (Bloomsbury, 2025) and Media Violence and Christian Ethics (CUP, 2007). He is currently finishing a book on A Passion for Performance: The mysterious resurgence of religious drama (OUP, 2027). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and a life member of Clare Hall, at the University of Cambridge.
Professor Mitchell has also served on international film juries at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals. He directs several projects on peacebuilding, including one which led to a widely used co-edited volume on Peacebuilding and the Arts (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020). He has also worked with Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, as well as Palestinian and Israeli journalists, on a peace building project in Jerusalem and beyond. A keen swimmer, cricketer and former marathon runner, he has lectured all over the world. One of his daughters, Jasmine, is the most recent winner of The Great British Bake Off.