About the Orthodox Christian Studies Center
The Orthodox Christian Studies Center provides a space within a university setting for engagement with Orthodox Christianity by undergraduate and graduate students, participating faculty, and friends. It seeks to promote understanding of Orthodox Christianity in Western Culture; to preserve and perpetuate a vibrant Orthodox Christian tradition in America; to articulate the value and relevance of the Orthodox Christian tradition; and to promote ecumenical dialogue and relations, especially with Roman Catholicism.
Fordham University has had a long and vibrant relationship with Orthodox Christian communities. The internationally renowned Orthodox theologian and historian, The Very Rev. John Meyendorff, was a Professor of Byzantine History at Fordham from 1967 to 1992, and for generations, Orthodox families have chosen Fordham as the school where students pursue a rigorous education that respects and encourages a deeper understanding of Christianity.
In 2004, Fordham presented the inaugural Annual Orthodoxy in America Lecture featuring His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America. Orthodox Christian Studies was launched as an academic program in 2007 when the interdisciplinary minor was established. In 2009, His All Holiness, Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch visited Fordham University and was awarded an honorary degree. The Orthodox Christian Studies Center was officially founded by Professors George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou in 2012.
Today, the Center supports a multitude of research initiatives, publications, lectures, and a thriving undergraduate minor in Orthodox Christian Studies. Over the years, the Center has grown through generous individual and foundation support, including significant awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Patterson Family Foundation, the Jaharis Family Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the British Council, the Nicholas J. and Anna K. Bouras Foundation, and Leadership 100, among others.
Center Leadership
George E. Demacopoulos
Co-Director
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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); and Orthodox Constructions of the West (2013); Orthodox Readings of Augustine (2008).
Demacopoulos is an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, offikion designation Didaskalos Tou Genous (Teacher of the People).
Aristotle Papanikolaou
Co-Director
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Aristotle Papanikolaou is a Professor of Theology, Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture, and the Co-director and Co-founder of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center. Professor Papanikolaou received the 2012 Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In 2012-13, Papanikolaou was awarded a Sabbatical Grant for Researchers from the Louisville Institute to explore how Eastern Christian notions of virtue are relevant for illuminating both the plight and healing of combat veterans who experience trauma. Professor Papanikolaou’s project employs Michel Foucault’s notion of truth-telling to scrutinize and elucidate the Orthodox Christian concept of virtue ethics. The end result of this research will be an innovative and constructive vision for understanding post-traumatic stress syndrome in combat veterans.
Papanikolaou earned his BA, Summa Cum Laude, from Fordham University in 1988. He then graduated Valedictorian with an M.Div. from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, where he later served from 1995-2000 as Registrar and as Assistant Professor of Ethics and Theology. He received his PhD in 1998 from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews and of two monographs: Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism and Divine-Human Communion (2006) and The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy (2012). He is co-editor with George E. Demacopoulos of Orthodox Readings of Augustine (2008) and Orthodox Constructions of the West (2013), and he is co-editor with Demacopoulos of the Fordham University Press series, Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought, and with Elizabeth Prodromou of Thinking through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars (2008).
Professor Papanikolaou is an Archon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Nathaniel Wood
Associate Director
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Nathaniel Wood is the associate director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He serves as managing editor of the Center's online editorial forum, Public Orthodoxy, and its academic journal, The Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies. He earned a PhD in Systematic Theology from Fordham, a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University's Candler School of Theology, and a Bachelor of Arts from Huntington University. He joined the Orthodox Christian Studies Center as a graduate assistant in 2012 and has served as associate director since 2017.
Wood is a constructive theologian who specializes in Christology, Trinitarian theology, theologies of personhood, political theology, and Russian religious philosophy. He is the author of Deifying Democracy: Liberalism and the Politics of Theosis (2026) as well as several chapters and articles on Orthodox theologies of democracy and human rights. He has taught at Fordham, the University of Saint Joseph (Hartford), and the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Sergei Chapnin
Director of Communications
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Sergei Chapnin is Director of Communications at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University, and author of Religious Communities Under Pressure: Documenting Religious Persecution in Russia 2022–2026 (2026), with a foreword by Rowan Williams. A former Moscow Patriarchate employee with over fifteen years of experience, he has deep knowledge of Russian Orthodox traditions, Church administration, and Church-state relations in modern Russia.
Born in 1968, he graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University and studied at St. Tikhon's Theological Institute. In the 1990s, he worked for the leading independent Moscow newspapers Kommersant and Nezavisimaya Gazeta, and became one of the first journalists in Russia to cover religious life in the post-Soviet space professionally. In 2001, at the invitation of Patriarch Alexy II, he was appointed Executive Editor of the Church Herald newspaper. He later served as Executive Editor of The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, the leading official publication of the Russian Orthodox Church, and as Deputy Chief Editor of the Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House (2009–2015). In 2010–2013, he was Secretary of the Church, State, and Society Commission of the Inter-Conciliar Board of the Russian Orthodox Church and a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Theology of St. Tikhon's Orthodox Humanitarian University.
He joined Fordham's Orthodox Christian Studies Center in 2022. He is also Chief Editor of Дары (The Gifts), an almanac of contemporary Christian culture, and a curator of exhibitions of contemporary Christian art.
His articles and commentary have appeared in national and international media, including Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CBS, NPR, and First Things (USA); the BBC and The Economist (UK); Le Monde (France); Więź and KAI (Poland), among others.
In addition to Religious Communities Under Pressure, he is the author of two books in Russian: The Church in Post-Soviet Russia: Revival, "Quality of Faith," and Dialogue with Society (2013) and The Church Revival: A Summary (2018).