Maja is the Academic Dean. Maja joined Laidlaw College in 2021, and has served as Practical Theology Lead, with the School of Theology Leadership Team, overseeing our Christian Leadership programmes and partnerships. Her research interests include the theology of the body, theological anthropology, disability theology, and eschatology. She is exploring what the Christian tradition can offer to critique and inform modern cultural ideologies about human flourishing and the body.

Maja is an ordained pastor in the Equippers Church network and she is passionate about equipping people for life in Jesus Christ. She is married to Dave and they have four daughters in primary and high school. Maja loves to spend her downtime in the garden, with a good book, or in the kitchen baking with one of her girls. She blogs on the topics of spiritual formation and pastoral theology at www.somewhitespace.blog

Selected publications

Whitaker, Maja I. Perfect in Weakness: Disability and Human Flourishing in the New Creation. Baylor University Press, 2023.

Whitaker, M. I., and E. Brouwer. "Growth and Work in the New Creation: Diverse Visions of Human Flourishing within a Dynamic Eschatology." Pacific Journal of Theological Review 18 (2023): 3-10.

Whitaker, M. I. "The Wounds of the Risen Christ: Evidence for the Retention of Disabling Conditions in the Resurrection Body." Journal of Disability & Religion 26 (2022): 280-93.

Whitaker, M. I. “Perfected Yet Still Disabled? Continuity of Embodied Identity in Resurrection Life.” Stimulus: The New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice 26 (2019): 18-25.

King M. R., M. I. Whitaker, and D. G. Jones. “I See Dead People: Insights from the Humanities into the Nature of Plastinated Cadavers.” Journal of Medical Humanities 35 (2014): 361-376

Jones D. G., and M. I. Whitaker. “Anatomy’s Use of Unclaimed Bodies: Reasons Against Continued Dependence on an Ethically Dubious Practice.” Clinical Anatomy 25 (2012): 246-254.King M. R., M. I. Whitaker, and D. G. Jones. (2011) “Speculative ethics: Valid enterprise or tragic cul-de-sac?” Pages 139-158 in Bioethics in the 21st century, ed. A. Rudnick. InTech, 2011. 

Jones D. G, and M. I. Whitaker. Speaking for the Dead: The Human Body in Biology and Medicine, second edition. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Jones D. G, and M. I. Whitaker. “Engaging with Plastination and the Body Worlds phenomenon: A Cultural and Intellectual Challenge for Anatomists.” Clinical Anatomy 22 (2009): 770-776