George E. Demacopoulos

Dr. George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham University. He is a globally-recognized expert in Early Christianity, Byzantine Christianity, and Orthodox Christian Studies. Dr. Demacopoulos currently serves as chair of the Senior Fellows in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and was a two-term President of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (from 2023-2025). He is co-chair of the Byzantine Studies section of the International Orthodox Theological Association. He is co-editor of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies and a member of the editorial board for Dumbarton Oaks Publications. From 2015-2025, he served on the Advisory Board for the Journal of Early Christian Studies.

Along with Aristotle Papanikolaou, Dr. Demacopoulos co-founded the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, which is the only university-based center of Orthodox Christian Studies in the Western Hemisphere. The Center provides the only interdisciplinary minor in Orthodox Christian Studies in the United States. It enjoys a robust schedule of research fellowships, international conferences, local events, and public webinars. It also maintains an ambitious publication portfolio with the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, three university press books series, and the widely acclaimed online forum, Public Orthodoxy.

To support the scholarly work of Orthodox Christian Studies at Fordham, Drs. Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou have raised more than $15m through competitive grants and private donations. Among other awards, they received a $2m matching challenge from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a $380k grant from the Henry Luce Foundation as well as additional grants from Leadership 100, Open Society, the US-Russia Foundation, and the British Academy.

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’ research and teaching interests are in the fields of Early Christian and Medieval/Byzantine Church History. He specializes in the relationship between Orthodox and Roman Catholics during the Middle Ages. His monographs have examined a range of topics in Early Christianity and Byzantine Church History, including asceticism, pastoral care, the early papacy, the Fourth Crusade, and themes of violence in Byzantine hymnography. He has just completed a book that traces the fault-lines in the modern Orthodox Church to unresolved disputes from the Byzantine period. His next project will explore the legends of the emperor Constantine that circulated throughout the Greek and Latin Middle Ages.

In addition to his own discrete research projects, Dr. Demacopoulos has collaborated with Dr. Papanikolaou on a range of broader topics in the field of Orthodox Christian Studies. Together, they have published six university-press edited volumes on themes such as the Orthodox reception of St. Augustine, Orthodox Identity, Christianity and Democracy, the rise of Fundamentalism in the Orthodox tradition, Theosis, and the Council of Nicaea.

Dr. Demacopoulos has published five university-press monographs (a sixth is approved and forthcoming) and seven co-edited books. He has published more than 30 scholarly articles and book chapters and nearly 100 book reviews, encyclopedia articles, and short essays for public consumption.

The monographs include:

• Orthodox Christianity and the Specters of Byzantium (Fordham University Press, forthcoming).
• Sacralizing Violence in Byzantium: Hymns, Empire, and the Narrowing of Christian Identity (Dumbarton Oaks, 2025).
• Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade (Fordham University Press, 2019).
• Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor and First Man of Rome (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).
• The Invention of Peter: The Development and Reception of the Petrine Discourse at the Close of Christian Antiquity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
• Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

The edited volumes include:

• Nicaea and the Future of Christianity, ed. by G. Demacopoulos and A. Papanikolaou (Fordham University Press, 2025).
• Faith, Reason, Theosis, ed. by A. Papanikolaou and George Demacopoulos (Fordham University Press, 2023).
• Orthodoxy and Fundamentalism: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by D. Dzalto and G. Demacopoulos (Fortress Academic, 2022).
• Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism, ed. by A. Papanikolaou and G. Demacopoulos (Fordham University Press, 2020).
• Christianity, Democracy and the Shadow of Constantine, ed. by G. Demacopoulos and A. Papanikolaou (Fordham University Press, 2016). *Winner of the Alpha Sigma Nu award for best book in Theology, 2017*
• Orthodox Constructions of the West, ed. by G. Demacopoulos & A. Papanikolaou (Fordham University Press, 2013).
• Orthodox Readings of Augustine, ed. by G. Demacopoulos & A. Papanikolaou (reprinted, Fordham University Press, 2020).