Margaret Y. MacDonald
Faculty of Arts
Study of Religion
Professor
Office: McNally North 528
Phone: 902-491-6699
Email: margaret.macdonald@smu.ca
Margaret Y. MacDonald is Professor of Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. She was Dean of Arts at Saint Mary’s University from 2014 to 2020 and previously taught at St. Francis Xavier University (Nova Scotia) and the University of Ottawa. In the winter of 2018, she held the McCarthy Chair in Biblical Studies at the Pontifical Biblical Institute (the Biblicum) in Rome.
She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford where she held a Commonwealth Scholarship.
In addition to numerous essays and journal articles, her publications include five books: The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Roman World (2014); Carolyn Osiek and Margaret Y. MacDonald (with Janet Tulloch), A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity (2006); Colossians and Ephesians (Sacra Pagina; 2000); Early Christian Women and Pagan Opinion: The Power of the Hysterical Woman (1996); The Pauline Churches: A socio-historical study of institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Writings (1988).
Essay on children and childhood in the New Testament
Essay on Nursing Imagery in the New Testament
Ongoing projects on education in early Christianity and on early Christianity in ancient Corinth.
Early Christianity; Paul; Roman setting of Christian Origins; Women and Gender in Early Christianity; Children in Early Christianity; Education in the Roman world.
BA Hon, SMU, 1983 (Faculty of Arts Medal and Governor General's Medal);
DPhil, Oxford University, 1987.