Dr Lesa Scholl, FRHistS, oversees the editing and publishing process for Zadok and is commissioning editor for Engage.Mail.
Lesa has almost 20 years’ experience as a scholar and editor. Her research interests lie at the intersections of social justice, theology and history. She is President of the Australasian Victorian Studies Association and is on the Board of Directors for Melbourne Forum. She is an honorary researcher in the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne and a research fellow with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty. Lesa is also a journalist with The Melbourne Anglican and a lay clerk at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Prior to joining Ethos, Lesa worked in senior leadership at a number of university colleges. She was Dean and Vice Master at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, Head of Kathleen Lumley College at the University of Adelaide, and Vice Principal of Emmanuel College, University of Queensland. At the University of Queensland she lectured in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History.
Lesa has authored several books, including Food Restraint and Fasting in Victorian Religion and Literature (2022), Hunger, Poetry and the Oxford Movement (2020) and the forthcoming Medicine, Theology and Wellness in Britain from the Enlightenment to Modernity (November 2025). Her edited works include Medicine, Health and Being Human (2018) and the more than 1 million words of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing (2020).
Lesa is fur-mum to Baylor and Bear and enjoys playing tenor horn and trumpet when she isn’t singing in Melbourne’s St Paul’s choir.