Date: November 9, 2026
An inaugural lecture has its roots in the universities of medieval Europe, where a new master’s admission to the community of teachers included a formal first lecture. That practice is an ancestor of the modern professorial inaugural: a highly symbolic occasion when the holder of a chair sets out a vision for the field they are called to research and teach. It is both a celebration of scholarly achievement and a public affirmation of the responsibilities that accompany it.
Tomorrow evening at 5 p.m., Senior Vice President Melody Knowles will deliver her Inaugural Lecture. Many of us have heard Melody in the pulpit, where her careful exposition of the Psalms brings their profound theology and practical wisdom vividly to life. This lecture offers an opportunity to explore the scholarship behind that preaching: the interpretive questions and theological convictions that shape how we read a psalm.
Melody has served this institution with skill, judgment, and dedication. We know the administrator whose leadership sustains our academic life; tomorrow, we will encounter more fully the scholar whose work helps give that life its substance. This is an occasion not simply to celebrate a colleague, but to share in the intellectual curiosity and love of Scripture at the heart of her vocation.
The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D.
Dean and President of Virginia Theological Seminary and the President of The General Theological Seminary.