Nicole Starling

Academic Dean

BA/LLB (Hons), MA(CS), MRes, PhD

Nicole began teaching Christianity in History at Morling in 2014 before joining the Bible and Theology faculty in 2022. She completed her doctorate and post-doctoral fellowship through Macquarie University, researching the relationship between religious belief and enlightenment morality in the Australian temperance movement. Her research is focussed on the history of evangelicalism, Christian social activism and the church in Australia. Nicole is a member of the Evangelical History Association Executive and is the Editor of their journal, Lucas.
Nicole was previously a member of the pastoral team at Chatswood Baptist, and is now a member of Petersham Baptist Church.

Recent publications:

Evangelical Belief and Enlightenment Morality in the Australian Temperance Movement: 1832-1930, Routledge, 2024.

“‘Victims of Intemperance’: Status Politics and Clerical Drunkenness in the Second-Wave Temperance Societies of Colonial Sydney,” Australian Historical Studies, Vol 53, 1, 2022, 43.

“‘An auxiliary, not an usurper’: John Saunders, Temperance, and Secularisation,” Journal of Religious History 43 (2019): 380–99.

“‘A combination of aristocrats and religionists’? Religion, class and respectability in the Temperance activism of John Saunders,” Lucas: An Evangelical History Review 2.13 (2019): 13–38.

“‘Only Connect’: E. M. Forster, the Bloomsbury group, and the two Marianne Thorntons,” Fides et Historia 49 (2017): 16–35.