Person

Thomas Arentzen

Visiting Research Fellow

  • Affiliated Church History
  • Centre for Theology and Religious Studies

Contact information

E-mail thomas.arentzenctr.luse

  • Reader, Lund University 2018
  • Ph.D., Lund University 2014
  • Cand.philol., Universitety of Oslo 2005
  • Cand.mag., Universitety of Oslo 2001

I defended my doctoral thesis in 2014. From 2015 to 2019 I conducted the research project Bodies in Motion: Religion and Corporeality in Late Antiquity as a postdoc. I worked as visiting scholar at Brown University in the spring term of 2016. In 2018 I became Reader (docent) in Church History in Lund. The academic year of 2018-19, I worked as Research Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.

My research interests include Byzantine Christianity and ecology. I have written the book Byzantine Tree Life with two American colleagues. More generally, I have explored popular piety and literary expressions of Christian faith. My monograph The Virgin in Song from 2017 studies representations of the Virgin Mary in late ancient poetry.

Currently I lead the Uppsala based research project Beyond the Garden: An Ecocritical Approach to Early Byzantine Christianity.

In the Research Portal you can search and find information about all active researchers, units, publications, projects, infrastructures, and more, to get an overview of Lund University research.

My profile in Lund University research portal
  • Council Member, l’Association Internationale d’Études Patristiques (AIEP/IAPS)
  • Board Member, Collegium Patristicum Lundense
  • Committee Member, the Oslo Coalition’s International Expert Committee for the New Directions in Orthodox Thought and Practice project "Democracy and the Church in Orthodox Christianity"
  • Member of Society of Oriental Liturgy
  • Member of the Research Collegium, Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul
  • Article-editor of Patristica Nordica Annuaria

Larger Research Grants:

  • Research grant from the Norwegian Research Council: Bodies in Motion: Religion and Corporeality in Late Antiquity, 2015–2019.
  • Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection with the project Reading between the Limbs: Holy Week and Byzantine Bodies, 2018–2019.
  • Research grant from the Swedish Research Council: Beyond the Garden: An Ecocritical Approach to Early Byzantine Christianity, 2019–2023.
  • 2016–2018 I conducted the Oslo Coalition’s international project New Directions in Orthodox Christian Thought and Practice: Gender and Sexuality in Orthodox Christianity, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also led the application work for the a new project, Democracy and the Church in Orthodox Christianity, which in 2019 received funding for three more years from the Ministry.
Thomas Arentzen

Visiting Research Fellow

  • Affiliated Church History
  • Centre for Theology and Religious Studies

Contact information

E-mail thomas.arentzenctr.luse

Page Manager: hege_irene.markussenctr.luse | 2020-06-11