Ashley Purpura

Ashley Purpura is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, a Faculty fellow of the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program, and the Director of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue University. She received her Ph.D. at Fordham University in 2014.  Currently, she researches the history of Orthodox Christian thought in its Byzantine tradition and investigates how historical religious practices and ways of thinking shape power structures and complex identities for past and present religious communities. She has published articles on religious authority and conceptions of gender, and her first book, God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium (Fordham University Press, 2018) examines the development and maintenance of “hierarchy” as a theological concept. She was the 2020-21 recipient of the Center's NEH Faculty Fellowship in Orthodox Christian Studies.

She is co-editor of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center's book series Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought with Fordham University Press and