Dr. Shawn Flynn has been appointed as President of St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta for a five-year term effective July 1, 2021.
Dr. Flynn earned his PhD in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto in 2012. He studied Hebrew Bible, with minors in Akkadian and Egyptology.
Dr. Flynn is an Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at St. Joseph's College (University of Alberta), and he has served St. Joseph's College since 2017 as the Academic Dean, then Vice President (Academic), Dean, and most recently as Interim President in 2020-21. Dr. Flynn's research area in the Hebrew Bible in its ancient context focuses on topics such as God in the Hebrew Bible and children in the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East.
Dr. Flynn's first book was YHWH Is King: The Development of Divine Kingship in Ancient Israel (Brill, 2013). He has also authored Children in Ancient Israel: The Hebrew Bible and Mesopotamia in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2018). He has edited Children in the Bible and the Ancient World: Comparative and Historical Methods in Reading Ancient Children (Routledge, 2019). In addition, he has published another book A Story of YHWH: Cultural Translation and Subversive Reception in Israelite History (Routledge, 2019).