At AC’s 2025 graduation ceremony, Daniela Rizzo received her PhD for a thesis titled “Theological foundations for a pneumatology of animals.” The thesis was awarded the President’s Doctoral Research Medal and the Ross Winchester Award for Pentecostal Studies. Dr Rizzo’s groundbreaking research helps develop a theological account of animals, which, she notes, “is an area of theology that has been largely overlooked.”
The international experts who examined her PhD thesis described it as “an outstanding, original, and ground-breaking work.” One examiner said: “I am stunned by the quality of this thesis on animal pneumatology. I can hardly praise it enough. I have never read such a brilliant engagement with this topic.”
As Pentecostal theologian, Dr Rizzo hopes that her research will inspire students to consider the universal implications of the Spirit’s work, and that it will equip the Pentecostal church to think theologically about creation and non-human animals.
During her doctoral studies, she published research in leading academic journals (for example here and here), and presented her work at a major international conference at Oxford University. Her next step will be to publish her thesis as a book, and then to pursue further research on the theological significance of animals and environmental care.