Constant Mews (born 1954), D. Phil (Oxon) is Professor of Medieval Thought and Director, Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Monash University, Melbourne. He is an authority on medieval religious thought, especially on the medieval philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard, and on interfaith dialogue. He discovered and published what are possibly the original letters exchanged between Peter Abelard and his lover, Heloise. Early life Mews was born in England and spent his childhood there and in New Zealand. He completed his secondary education at St Peter's College, Auckland, New Zealand. He won the Trenwith Cup for History, the Taylor Cup for languages, the Arthur Bolland Cup for English and was the Dux of the college in his final year at St Peter's College in 1971. His brother is Douglas Mews. Academic career Mews attended the University of Auckland and completed BA and MA degrees there in History. He carried out doctoral study at the University of Oxford, followed by five years (1980–1985) teaching British civilisation at the Universite de Paris III, while pursuing studies in medieval thought (focusing on Peter Abelard) in connection with Jean Jolivet, at the École pratique des hautes études en sciences religieuses. This was followed by two years as a Leverhulme research fellow at the University of Sheffield on editing the writings of Peter Abelard. Mews took up a position at Monash University as Lecturer in the Department of History in July 1987. He became involved in developing the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology and in promoting studies in religion more generally, with a strong interest in interfaith work. He has had spells of study at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1990 and 2000, and has also again taught in Paris, at the École pratique des hautes études (Ve section) and in the École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Letters of Abelard and Heloise In 1999 Mews published The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard. This contains about 113 medieval love letters, edited in 1974 by the German scholar Ewald Koensgen. The letters, ascribed simply to a man and woman, survived because a 15th-century monk copied them for an anthology. Having spent some 20 years studying Abelard's philosophical and theological writings, Mews concluded that the letters (the longest known correspondence between a man and a woman from the medieval period) were written by Abelard and Heloise. In 2005 the