Person
Visiting Research Fellow
- Affiliated Church History
- Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
Contact information
E-mail thomas.arentzenctr.luse
- Docent, Lund University 2018
- Ph.D., LU 2014
- Cand.philol., Universitety of Oslo 2005
- Cand.mag., UiO 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 Docent in Church History in Lund. The academic year 2018-19 I worked as Research Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. 2019-23 I led the research project Beyond the Garden: An Ecocritical Approach to Early Byzantine Christianity inUppsala.
My research interests include Byzantine Christianity and ecology. I have written the books Byzantine Tree Life with two American colleagues and The Gospel of Trees. 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.
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My profile in Lund University research portal- President of Collegium Patristicum Lundense
- Member of the Oslo Coalition's international expert committee for New Directions in Orthodox Thought and Practice
- Member of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul's Collegium of Scholars
- Member of Society of Oriental Liturgy
- Editor of Patristica Nordica Annuaria
- Council Member, l’Association Internationale d’Études Patristiques (AIEP/IAPS, 2015–2023)
- Member of the Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies’s Advisory Council
- Member of the Church of Sweden Research Series’s editorial board
- Member of the journal Svenskt Gudstjänstliv’s editorial board
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.
Visiting Research Fellow
- Affiliated Church History
- Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
Contact information
E-mail thomas.arentzenctr.luse