Aristotle Papanikolaou

Aristotle Papanikolaou is a Professor of Theology and the Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture. He is Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, and Senior Fellow at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion. In 2012, he received the Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the Humanities. He was born/raised in Chicago, Illinois, and he enjoys Russian literature, Byzantine and Greek music, and is a bit of a foodie.

Since founding the Orthodox Christian Studies Center with George Demacopoulos in 2012, he has dedicated his time to building the Center’s endowment and starting a host of globally-recognized initiatives such as the National Endowment for the Humanities Matching Challenge Grant, which funds two annual research fellowships in Orthodox Studies at Fordham. In 2019, the Center initiated a Henry-Luce funded project on “Orthodox Christianity and Human Rights." Also in 2019, the Center co-sponsored the British Council Bridging Voices project "Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Identity and the Challenges of Pluralism and Sexual Diversity in a Secular Age."

Aristotle Papanikolaou’s areas of expertise are Eastern Orthodox theology, Trinitarian theology, and political theology. He is currently developing an expertise on the relation between theological anthropology, violence and virtue ethics.

His on-going research interests include contemporary Orthodox theology (nineteenth and twentieth centuries), Trinitarian theology, and political theology. His current research agenda relates to theological anthropology, and specifically how the Christian notion of theosis affects our understanding of what it means to be human. As a theotic theological anthropology, he is interested in the question of how theosis can illuminate understandings of identity, sin, virtue, the communication of grace, and a relational understanding of personhood.

Watch first hour of livestream here