Biography
John M. Hull was an Australian-born theologian, writer and academic. He became totally blind in 1980 after years of deteriorating vision and kept an audio diary of the experience that formed the basis of his 1990 book Touching the Rock (later reissued as Notes on Blindness). The 2016 documentary of the same name uses his original recordings, in which he is heard as himself.
Hull was born in Corryong, Victoria, in 1935. He studied in Australia and at Cambridge before settling in the United Kingdom, where he became the first professor of religious education at the University of Birmingham in 1989. He continued to teach and write on religious education, practical theology and disability after losing his sight, and died in Birmingham in 2015.
