Prof  Ward is an English theologian and Anglican priest who has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford since 2012. He was formerly the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Philosophical Theology and Ethics and the Head of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester.

Prior to that he was the Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics (1998–2009) and Senior Fellow in Religion and Gender (1997–98) at the university. Before that he was successively a chaplain and fellow at Exeter College, Oxford, a part-time lecturer at the University of Birmingham and dean and director of Studies for Theology at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Prof Ward has engaged in different fields of theology, especially postmodern theology, and other disciplines such as philosophy, psychoanalysis, gender studies, and queer theory. He has written on the theology of language, postmodernism, cultural analysis and Christology.