Harriet Crabtree has worked for the Inter Faith Network for the UK since 1990. She is its Deputy Director.

The Inter Faith Network links faith community representative bodies and inter faith bodies in the UK and works with them to help make this a country in which people of different faiths can draw on their spiritual heritages, with integrity, to help create a society rooted in shared values and characterised by mutual respect and understanding. It does this through its advice and information service; creating resources to help people working to promote good inter faith relations; holding meetings and conferences where social and religious questions of concern to the different faith communities can be examined together; and fostering inter faith co-operation on social issues.

Harriet Crabtree’s work falls within all these areas but with an emphasis on special projects. For example, she represented the Network on the 'Lambeth Group' which advised Government and others on the religious aspects of the Millennium celebrations and helped create the Shared Act of Reflection and Commitment by the Faith Communities of the UK which took place at the Houses of Parliament on 3 January 2000 as part of the official Millennium celebrations and was in many ways a ground breaking event.

In 2002 Dr Crabtree worked on behalf of the Network to advise on the religious aspects of the Golden Jubilee and, with the Golden Jubilee Office, to arrange the Golden Jubilee Youth People's Forum which brought 80 young people of different faiths together at St James' Palace in June 2003 to discuss faith and service to the community. Following on from this, she helped create the Inter Faith Network's inter faith action guide for young people: Connect: Different Faiths Shared Values. Currently, she is working on a day conference on promoting inter faith work with young people. She sees this work with young people as being a crucial area of inter faith activity: “Some of the toughest inter faith encounters are between young people – they ask questions and push points in ways that older members of their communities can find a challenge. At the same time, young people often bring a correspondingly greater passion and optimism about the possibility of peace and justice and through inter faith cooperation can make a significant contribution to the world around them.”

In 2003 she carried out a research project, funded by the Home Office, looking at the burgeoning pattern of local inter faith activity in the UK and at examples of successful projects and programmes. The report on this was published as Inter Faith Activity in the UK: A Survey. There are now nearly 200 local inter faith bodies around the UK which bring people of the different faiths together to learn more about each other’s faiths and to build good inter faith relations locally. Dr Crabtree and her colleagues at the Network often work with local groups to help them develop their programmes. She is currently working on an update of the Inter Faith Network's guide to setting up and running local inter faith groups: The Local Inter Faith Guide.

The last few years have seen a great increase in inter faith activity in the UK but sometimes also significant challenges when relationships between particular groups have hit problems, often due to the impact of overseas events or of difficulties in particular towns and cities. Harriet Crabtree comments though that the work never ceases to feel deeply worthwhile: “Through the Network I meet many inspiring and committed individuals….I feel privileged to be part of a journey as a nation (or nations, for I feel English as much as British) towards a future in which people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds have created a strong common life and identity which is British in a new way which is true to the many different identities which are forging this.”

Dr Crabtree grew up in Yorkshire and Sussex. During the 1980s she lived in the United States, where she had gone as a Fulbright scholar following her time at the University of London where she read theology. She did her masters degree and doctorate in theology at Harvard Divinity School, living and working for a number of years at the Centre for the Study of World Religions there alongside scholars of different faiths from many different countries. After receiving her doctorate (for her thesis which was published as The Christian Life: Traditional Metaphors and Contemporary Theology) she worked briefly as a lecturer in religion in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard before returning to the UK.

She is a member of the Church of England and actively involved in her local parish church, St George's Tufnell Park in north London. Working as one of a small number of staff in a charity with a high workload for the last fifteen years has taken a toll on engagement with other projects outside of work but she is a member of a number of initiatives, such as the Christian Socialist Movement and the Fawcett Society which campaign for social justice.