George Demacopoulos

George Demacopoulos is the Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies, co-director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, and a Professor of Historical Theology at Fordham University. Professor Demacopoulos’ research and teaching interests are in the fields of early Christian and Byzantine church history. He specializes in the relationship between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches during the Middle Ages.

The University of Tennessee College of Arts and Sciences—where Demacopoulos earned his undergraduate degree—honored him with the 2016 Humanities Achievement Award. Demacopoulos earned an MTS, with highest honors, from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology before enrolling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies.

In 2012, Demacopoulos earned the most prestigious grant awarded for humanities-based research: a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Matching Challenge Grant. His current research project is a reevaluation, via postcolonial critique, of medieval encounters between eastern and western Christians in the era of the Crusades.

Demacopoulos is the author of numerous scholarly articles, blogs, and several books, including Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church (2006); The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (2013); and Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome (2016). He has published a translation (from Latin) of St. Gregory the Great’s Book of Pastoral Rule (2011) for St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press’ Popular Patristic Texts Series. He and his colleague Aristotle Papanikolaou are the co-editors of Tradition, Secularization, and Fundamentalism (forthcoming); Christianity, Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine (forthcoming); Orthodox Constructions of the West (2013); Orthodox Readings of Augustine (2008); and the Fordham University Press Series: Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought.

Demacopoulos is an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, offikion designation Didaskalos Tou Genous (Teacher of the People).