Fr. Rene Kollar, O.S.B., holds the Boniface Wimmer Endowed Chair in Monastic Studies and is Professor of History. He joined the College’s History faculty in 1981, and previously held the position of Dean of the former School of Humanities and Fine Arts from 2004-18. Fr. Rene’s research interests are in 19th and 20th century English Ecclesiastical History. His publications include six books: Westminster Cathedral: From Dream to Reality (1987); The Return of the Benedictines to London: A History of Ealing Abbey (1990); Abbot Aelred Carlyle, Caldey Island, and the Anglo-Catholic Revival in England (1995); A Universal Appeal: Aspects of the Revival of Monasticism in the West in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (1996); Searching for Raymond: Anglicanism, Spiritualism, and Bereavement between the Two World Wars (2000); and A Foreign and Wicked Institution? The Campaign against Convents in Victorian England (2011). Most recently, he edited the diary of an English nun which recounted her experiences in Belgium during World War I: A Nun, a Convent, and the German Occupation of Belgium. Mother Marie Georgine’s Diary of World War I (2016). Fr. Rene has also edited nine published lectures in the Wimmer Memorial Lecture Series given at St Vincent College including talks by Christopher Dawson, John Tracy Ellis, Jacques Maritain, and Paul Oskar Kristeller. Fr. Rene’s numerous other publications have appeared in journals such as American Benedictine Review, Feminist Theology, Harvard Theological Review, Irish Theological Quarterly, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Louvain Studies, and Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique. He has also contributed numerous book reviews to American and English journals. In 1983, he wrote the script, “Benjamin Carlyle [Abbot Aelred Carlyle],” Scan Films (Cardiff, Wales), for the series “The Welsh Connection” shown on BBC Wales. His other academic activities include conference presentations in America, England, Wales; co-recipient of 2001 Freedom Project Teaching Grant, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, for an interdisciplinary course, “Freedom, Politics, and Theology”; and editorial board member The American Benedictine Review. In England, Fr. Rene was an Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Christian Doctrine and History, King’s College, University of London (1987-88), where he assisted in directing a graduate research seminar, “Christianity, Politics, and Modern Society.” He was also a Visiting Scholar at Heythrop College, University of London (1996-97). Fr. Rene is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
