Harriet Harris

Harriet Anne Harris (born 1968) is an English theologian and Anglican priest. As a theologian, her 1998 monograph Fundamentalism and Evangelicals received multiple reviews. Since January 2026, she has been the principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, a Church of England theological college. Before that, from 2010 to 2025, she was university chaplain and head of the multifaith chaplaincy service at the University of Edinburgh.

Early life and education Harris was born in 1968. She studied at Oriel College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1990. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree from the University of Oxford. She undertook training for holy orders at St Stephen's House, Oxford. She was also chaplain to Wadham College, Oxford, leaving her parish ministry to become the full-time chaplain in 2006. and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2022.

While at Edinburgh, she served as a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC). As convenor of the SEC's Doctrine Committee, she produced a paper on marriage for the SEC's 2015 General Synod that paved the way for the church's 2017 vote to authorize same-sex marriages.

In 1998, she published Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, which according to her University of Edinburgh biography was the best-selling entry in the Oxford Theological Monograph series. Scottish Biblical scholar James Barr described it as "brilliantly distinguished ... and incisively argued", adding that fundamentalism had been extensively studied in its political and social aspects but less so in its theological aspects, a gap he said Harris addressed. American historian D. G. Hart critiqued the lack of new historical insights as well as the absence of "a sustained treatment of revelation or theological hermeneutics".

In January 2026, Harris succeeded Humphrey Southern as principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon.