George E. Demacopoulos

George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies.  He is Co-Founding Director of the  Orthodox Christian Studies Center and Co-Founding Editor of the  Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.

A native of Tennessee, Dr. Demacopoulos came to Fordham in 2002 after receiving his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Along with Aristotle Papanikolaou, Dr. Demacopoulos co-founded Fordham's Orthodox Christian Studies Center, which is the only research-university Center of Orthodox Christianity in the United States.  The Center facilitates, funds, and publishes scholarly work related to the Orthodox Christianity broadly understood.  On behalf of the Center, Drs. Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou have won a number of prestigious grants, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Henry Luce Foundation, the British Council, and Leadership 100.

PhD - Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MA - Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MTS - Theology, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology
BA – University of Tennessee

Dr. Demacopoulos specializes in the History of Christianity for Late Antiquity, the early Medieval West, and Byzantium.  He also works broadly in the field of Orthodox Christian Studies and serves as the co-founding editor of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies.

Over the past few years, his research has been focused in three general areas: (1) Christian East/Christian West in the Middle Ages (2) the application of critical theory (especially postcolonial theory) to the study of Orthodox Christianity and (3) early Byzantine hymnography.

His current book projects include an examination of the presentation of violence in Byzantine hymnography and an assessment of the contested legacy of Byzantine Christianity in the modern Orthodox Christian world.

• Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019). 

• Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor and First Man of Rome (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015). 

• The Invention of Peter: The Development and Reception of the Petrine Discourse at the Close of Christian Antiquity (Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 

• Faith, Reason, Theosis, ed. by A. Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023). 

• Orthodoxy and Fundamentalism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by D. Dzalto and G. Demacopoulos (New York: Fortress Academic, 2022). 

• Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism, ed. by A. Papanikolaou and G. Demacopoulos (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2020). 

• Christianity, Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine, ed. by G. Demacopoulos and A. Papanikolaou (Bronx, Fordham University Press, 2016). *Winner of the Alpha Sigma Nu award for best book in Theology, 2017*