Academic profile

This page is divided into the following sections

  1. Academic biography (in the third person)
  2. Outlook
  3. Principal academic positions held
  4. Principal academic credentials
  5. Principal religious credentials and appointments
  6. Areas of research and academic interest
  7. Postgraduate research supervision
  8. Advisory academic positions
  9. Principal distinctions/honours
  10. Memberships
  11. Research outputs: publications and creative works

More information about the major areas of my career can be found at these links:

1. Academic biography (in the third person)

John Kersey’s work centres on the three areas of music, education and the Church.

John Kersey in his library at home, May 2022

He is an award-winning classical pianist who has specialized in bringing neglected music of the Romantic era to public notice via his own CD label and subsequent online releases. Performing in the UK and continental Europe, his experience includes solo recitals, concertos and chamber music, and premières of both historical and contemporary works. He was the first to record several unfinished piano sonatas by Beethoven and has also made the first recordings of works by Mendelssohn, Alkan, Eduard Franck, Theodor Kirchner and Walter Niemann. Having graduated with First Class Honours as the top pianist of his year from London’s Royal College of Music, he pursued postgraduate research there and at Cambridge, and subsequently took up a Junior Fellowship at the RCM.

He has taught in secondary, further and higher education both in Britain and overseas and in 2003 co-founded European-American University (Bunyoro-Kitara (Uganda); Panama; Florida (USA); France), which he continues to lead as Chancellor today. EAU is a private-sector humanitarian university that offers bespoke professional education for high achievers, chiefly in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015 he also took on responsibility as Chancellor for the Western Orthodox University (Florida, USA), a small religious university which operates in association with EAU. Since 2013, he has been International President of OXCEL – The Oxford Centre for Leadership, a British professional association that trains and assesses leaders in business and related areas around the world.

He has also maintained a busy consultancy in comparative international education since 2005, chiefly for the benefit of law firms in the United States preparing immigration petitions. He is Senior Consultant Evaluator and Director of Expert Opinion Services for Career Consulting International (Florida, USA) and regularly consults on the equivalency of international credentials and their role in immigration processes of the USA up to and including appellate level.

Following eighteen years of lay service in the Church, he undertook ministerial training and was ordained to the major orders in 2006, being appointed bishop in the Apostolic Episcopal Church in 2008. Since 2011, his ministerial work has been organized under the Abbey-Principality of San Luigi, an ecumenical foundation that includes Western Orthodox, Traditional Catholic and Continuing Anglican jurisdictions and embraces churches and Orders of Chivalry that have an international membership.

2. Outlook

Born and raised in Enfield, North London, my studies and work have brought me into close contact with people from many different countries and backgrounds. I have had a particularly close working relationship with western Africa, with valued colleagues in Nigeria and other countries in the region, and have also developed strong professional contacts in Latin America and the United States. Despite these factors, I am not an internationalist, but instead a Romantic nationalist. I believe strongly in the nation as the foundation for society, and that the promotion of mutual respect for the traditions and established ways of life of the different peoples of the world is the path towards lasting peace and understanding between them. The destruction of these distinguishing characteristics by globalization is something that I oppose, and that I see as an attempt to bring people to a common denominator rather than understanding them as individuals within a wide range of personal and societal contexts.

3. Principal academic positions held

  • Chancellor and Richard Williams Morgan Professor of History and Education at European-American University (Bunyoro-Kitara (Uganda); Panama; Florida (USA); France) (2007-).
    Co-founder of the University in 2003. Responsible for establishing a network of over twenty affiliated campuses, principally located in sub-Saharan Africa, which deliver programmes leading to University awards, targeting principally mid-career professionals seeking a bespoke educational experience, as well as offering programmes via correspondence-based distance learning. The overall network of tutorial and examining expertise now embraces a family of many hundreds. Overall responsibility for all aspects of the University’s operations, both academic and administrative.
  • Chancellor and Supreme Head of The Western Orthodox University (Florida, USA) (2015-)
    Overall academic and administrative responsibility for this religious university of the Catholicate of the West (see below), operated as a sister institution to European-American University with which it shares faculty and resources. The University celebrated its 75th year in 2020.
  • International President, OXCEL – The Oxford Centre for Leadership (2013-)
  • Full Professor in the International Program, Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica (2014-)
  • Senior Consultant Evaluator and Director of Expert Opinion Services, Career Consulting International (Florida, USA) (2005-)
    Over 5,000 expert opinions on international credentials prepared for submission before the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security; successful appeals of cases; working closely with leading immigration law firms, often in an advisory role.
  • Geoffrey Parsons Junior Fellow, Royal College of Music, United Kingdom (1997-98)
    Presented to HRH the Prince of Wales upon election.

  • In addition to various part-time and temporary lecturing positions in British and European universities and conservatoires, and part-time and full-time teaching and administrative positions in British independent schools and further education institutions (1997-2005)

4. Principal academic credentials

I was the first person in my family to attend a selective school and to go to university. At The Latymer School, Edmonton (which was then the top co-educational grammar school in the country), I was a Latymer Foundation Music Scholar and eleven times school prizewinner. Aged fourteen, I won a Local Authority Junior Exhibition Award to the Royal College of Music, London (RCM), where I studied piano. I continued my studies at undergraduate level, graduating with First Class Honours in the Bachelor of Music degree as the top pianist of my year, and was the winner of twelve prizes and awards. After postgraduate study at the RCM (resulting in the award of the degree of Master of Music in Performance Studies: Applied Research) and Christ’s College, Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Fellowship at the RCM, and as a result was presented to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III).

By the time I wished to continue my postgraduate studies, the British academic establishment had ceased to be open to someone of my traditionalist and conservative views, and was dominated by the ideas of the authoritarian Left. Consequently, my subsequent education was mostly undertaken in the international programmes of overseas private universities which enjoyed greater ideological independence; initially in Denmark and France, but later also in Africa and Latin America, where I have studied via distance learning. These studies, all of which have been self-funded, have represented the broadening of my academic interests to embrace areas including business, law, education, history and theology.

  • Doctorado en Humanidades con énfasis en Historia (Ph.D. in History), Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica, Costa Rica, 2011
    Thesis: Arnold Harris Mathew and the Old Catholic Movement in England 1908-52.
  • Doctorado en Humanidades (Ph.D), Universidad San Juan de la Cruz, Costa Rica, 2009
    Awarded by incorporation of previous doctoral studies and award in France.
  • Doctor en Educación con Especialización en Docencia Superior (Doctor of Education with specialization in Higher Education), International University, Panama, 2009
    73 semester hours of graduate credit with a grade point average of 2.88 out of the maximum 3.0 used in the University’s grading scale, equivalent to an overall A grade.
  • Docteur ès Lettres en Humanités (mention très honorable), Université Francophone Robert de Sorbon, Anjouan (Union of the Comoros)/Maine, USA/Ph.D en Humanités, Ecole Supérieure Robert de Sorbon, France, 2004
    Awarded following assessment according to the French validation des acquis de l’expérience law.
  • Doctor of Philosophy in Music, Knightsbridge University, Denmark, 2003
    By published work.
  • Master of Music, Central School of Religion, Indiana, USA, 2022
    Awarded ad eundem gradum
  • Maestria (MBA) en Administración de Empresas (Master of Business Administration), Universidad Empresarial de Costa Rica, Costa Rica, 2010
    14 courses and 42 credits, including an emphasis in entrepreneurship.
  • Master of Arts in History, Adam Smith University of Liberia, Liberia, 2005
    31 semester credit hours with A grades in all graded assessments, principally concentrated on the history of education, comprising two research reports, a research thesis, two assessed practicums, and assessed field experience based on my history teaching at the school level.
  • Master of Music in Performance Studies: Applied Research, Royal College of Music, United Kingdom, 1997
    with distinction in the Final Recital and viva voce sections.
  • Bachelor of Music with Honours: First Class, Royal College of Music, United Kingdom, 1995
    Graduated as the top pianist of my year.
  • Diploma of the Royal College of Music for Teachers: Pianoforte, Royal College of Music, United Kingdom, 1994
  • Fellow of the Faculty of Church Music, Central School of Religion, Indiana, USA/London, UK, 2021
  • Fellow (by examination in pianoforte) of the Curwen College of Music, 2003

5. Principal religious credentials and appointments

  • Doctor of Sacred Theology, The Apostolic Episcopal Church, New York, USA, 2015
    Honorary ecclesiastical degree awarded upon succeeding to the Primacy of the Apostolic Episcopal Church.
  • Doctor of Divinity, St Ephrem’s Institute, Sweden/Norway, 2008
    Awarded for “his Outstanding Works on Church History”
  • Prince-Abbot and Archbishop of San Luigi (2011-); Prince Grand Master of the San Luigi Orders.
  • Primate and Presiding Bishop of the Apostolic Episcopal Church and Prince-Catholicos of the Catholicate of the West (a federation of historic and present communions in the Orthodox, Old Catholic and Continuing Anglican traditions) (2015-)
    The Primate and Presiding Bishop of the AEC is constituted a Corporation Sole under the laws of the State of Hawaii, USA.
  • Ecclesiast of the Byelorussian Patriarchate of St Andrew the First-Called Apostle (2015-)
  • Bishop and Rector Pro-Provincial of Canterbury (2008-) and Prelate (2015-) in the Order of Corporate Reunion
  • Ordained to the major orders of deacon, priest and bishop in the Old and Liberal Catholic traditions, 2006. Consecrated bishop for the Apostolic Episcopal Church in a ceremony at Golders Green Unitarian Church, 23 November 2008, by bishops of the Apostolic Episcopal Church and the Ethiopian Coptic Orthodox Church of North and South America and Europe. An account of my religious ministry is given here.

6. Areas of research and academic interest

  • Neglected and lesser-known composers and performers of the Romantic era, including Walter Niemann, Theodor Kirchner and Charles-Valentin Alkan.
  • Piano performance
  • Piano performance history from the nineteenth-century to the present day
  • International educational credentials and their equivalency
  • History of distance education and experiential assessment within the university
  • APL/APEL/VAE jury member and experienced assessor
  • History, ecclesiology and mission of reactionary, traditionalist and progressive churches descending from the First Vatican Council and from Orthodox missions to the West, particularly the work and ministry of Arnold Harris Mathew and Joseph-René Vilatte
  • Western esotericism, particularly the interface of esotericism with the independent sacramental churches.
  • Legal and historical issues relating to sovereignty, nobility and chivalry.

7. Postgraduate research supervision

  • A few of the topics I have supervised include:
    • Doctorates: “The Power of Myth and Story in a Person’s Becoming” (Doctor of Theology); “Epiphanies…Shining a Light on the Church’s Year” (Doctor of Theology); Musical composition and performance (Doctor of Music).
    • Masters: “Discrimination and family values concerning the Romas/Causes of migrations/Importance of music in everyday life/The possibility to live together/Testimonials” (Master of Arts); “Messiah: Evolution, Expansion and Performance Practice” (Master of Arts)
  • Member of all doctoral and masters and VAE examining committees ex officio, European-American University and The Western Orthodox University, examining portfolios and theses both as a subject examiner and as panel convenor.
  • Portfolio examiner at all levels
  • Examining at higher doctorate level for degrees including Doctor of Letters, and of published work for the PhD by Published Work.
  • Examining for EAU and WOU alongside external specialists from, inter alia, the University of Brighton, University of Manchester and Richmond, The American International University in London

8. Advisory academic positions

9. Principal distinctions/honours

10. Memberships

11. Research outputs: publications and creative works

>>Research outputs