The Revd Canon Adrian Daffern

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Adrian Daffern

Chaplain (study leave cover)

Adrian has been an ordained Anglican priest for over 30 years, latterly serving as Vicar of the University Church in Cambridge, better known as Great St Mary's. He now works for the Church of England nationally as Cathedrals and Major Churches Officer. He is a Fellow and Tutor Lucy Cavendish College, one of the first men to be so elected when the college went co-ed in 2019.

Adrian holds degrees from the universities Durham, Oxford, and Cambridge. After his ordination in 1992 Adrian served as a curate in Lichfield, as a Team Vicar on a housing estate in Stafford, and then as vicar of a large post-industrial parish in Walsall. He then spent seven years as a Residentiary Canon at Coventry Cathedral before spending eight years in the Diocese of Oxford as Rector of Woodstock and Bladon, Area Dean of Woodstock, and Assistant Archdeacon of Dorchester.

A keen musician and a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists, for a few years Adrian could be heard at the organ in episodes of BBC R4’s The Archers. As well as music, he loves sport (especially playing squash), literature, theatre and cinema, and travelling at home and abroad. He has published on the spirituality of Julian of Norwich, liturgy and worship, and the theology of sacred space. Adrian is married to the Reverend Dr Megan Daffern, a Hebrew scholar who is currently serving as Dean and Director of Studies in Theology at Gonville and Caius College.