Dr Melissa Tan

Biography

Originally from West London, I have spent many years living and working in different parts of the world, such as Beijing, China; Taipei, Taiwan; and Southern California, USA. This embodied experience of diverse cultural contexts has strongly informed my research interests and projects.

At the University of Aberdeen, under Professor Grant Macaskill’s supervision, my doctoral project (‘Centring a Relational Paradigm for Honour–Shame from Confucianism for Biblical Interpretation’) drew on my identity as a British–Chinese researcher to reframe the study of honour–shame in the New Testament. As well as demonstrating the benefit of integrating historical Chinese philosophy into the analysis of the biblical text, the thesis explored the distortive effects of westernised accounts of non- western thought. In doing so, this study began to explore the strategic and intentional practices by which scholars can understand the implicit influence of their social location on their research process.

I joined the Aberdeen divinity dept this March, primarily to work on research impact for REF (Research Excellence Framework). I am also co-editing a volume on having a critical self-awareness of one’s social location (known as positionality) in biblical studies. As the discourse around EDI/DEI and decolonization in academia continues, many biblical scholars are realising how important it is to be aware of the ways their social location can tacitly inform their research activities. Thus, this volume will make a significant contribution towards the emergent efforts to acknowledge and address those influences at the methodological level in the field of biblical studies.

External Memberships

British New Testament Society

Society of Biblical Literature

Institute of Biblical Research

Evangelical Theological Society