Associate Chaplain

Rev Ali Newell

Ali Newell arrived in December as the associate chaplain at the university, She was formerly a chaplain at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She came back to Scotland with her family to be co-warden at Iona Abbey for the Iona Community between 1988-92, then prison Chaplain at Edinburgh prison . She later worked in social responsibility for the Anglican diocese of Portsmouth, returning to Scotland to be the Director of the Ecumenical Spirituality Progamme for Scottish Churches Open College. For the last ten years she has been working in the field of spirituality, teaching and offering spiritual accompaniment at the Ignatian Spirituality Centre in Glasgow and leading retreats with her husband Philip Newell on Iona and at Casa del Sol in the high desert of New Mexico. This is a spirituality centre with a dispersed community of companions which Ali and Philip helped bring into being. Ali is a Church of Scotland minister and a trained counsellor. She is committed to creation-centred spirituality and to dialogue with other faiths in seeking to care for our planet and work for peace in the world. She appreciates fresh language in expressing faith and a spirituality that is embodied. She has four adult children, loves the outdoors and enjoys an artistic angle on things.