IOTA Colloquia

The IOTA Colloquia Program supports conferences, symposiums, workshops, and other events that advance our mission, foster synergy between the academy and the church, uphold the highest academic standards, lead to publications, and include no less than ten current IOTA members as either speakers or session chairs or attendees.

In 2025, IOTA is supporting the following colloquia with a grant of $3,000 each.

Orthodoxy and Human Rights in Times of War

This project gathers a geographically diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars for a workshop to explore the parameters of Orthodox thought on the meanings of war and the intersections of war and human rights. Three main questions will be addressed: 1. How do we conceptualize war in the Orthodox tradition? 2. How have relationships between Orthodox churches and states (including configurations in states with both Orthodox majority and minority populations) shaped Orthodox thought and practices related to war? and 3. What are the human rights implications of thus problematizing the concept of war? This is a joint initiative led by Prof. Elizabeth Prodromou (Co-chair of Orthodoxy, Politics, and International Relations Group and Dr. Effie Fokas (Co-chair of Orthodoxy, Culture, and the Public Square Group). Participants will work towards publication of a journal special issue and will discuss the potential for collaboration on relevant empirical research.

 Orthodox Women in the Transnational Orthodox World Project

Dr. Ruth Coates (Lead) and Dr. Carrie Frederick Frost (Co-lead, Co-chair of Women in the Orthodox Church Group) are initiating an ambitious project about Orthodox women living out their calling in the “transnational” world; in countries that are not historically or culturally Orthodox in both the recent past (twentieth century) and present. Women are entering roles in the Orthodox Church in unprecedented and significant numbers, and this unique moment in Orthodox history deserves to be studied and documented. The audience for the project is both academic and non-academic; the plan is to further scholarship on women and the church but also make that scholarship accessible and intelligible to the larger, non-academic Orthodox community.

Funding is being sought through the British Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Catalyst Award and possibly other sources. The project has many components culminating in an international conference at which many IOTA members will be present.

International Colloquium on St. Maximus the Confessor

The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, in collaboration with Károli Gáspár University (Hungary) and the International Center for Orthodox Studies (Serbia), is organizing the 6th International Colloquium on St. Maximus the Confessor, to be held in Belgrade from April 27–29, 2025. Dedicated to Professor Paul M. Blowers on his 70th birthday, the conference will explore divine self-revelation in the theology and exegesis of St. Maximus the Confessor. Topics include Trinitarian revelation, biblical hermeneutics, and Maximus’s exegesis. Selected papers will be published in a Festschrift for Paul M. Blowers within the Subsidia Maximiana series by Brepols. For more details, visit this website: https://maximus.ifdt.bg.ac.rs.