Orthodoxy, Politics, and International Relations Group
Chairs:
Lucian N. Leustean, Aston University (Birmingham, UK)
Lucian N. Leustean is Reader in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom, where he has taught since 2007. He studied international relations, law, and Orthodox theology in Bucharest, Romania, and completed his PhD in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His publications include, as author: The Ecumenical Movement and the Making of the European Community (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Orthodoxy and the Cold War. Religion and Political Power in Romania, 1947-65 (Palgrave, 2008) (Winner of the George Blazyca Prize in East European Studies from the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies); and as editor: Representing Religion in the European Union: Does God Matter? (Routledge, 2014), Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014), Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945-91 (Routledge, 2010), and Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Southeastern Europe (Fordham University Press, 2014).
Elizabeth Prodromou, Boston College (Massachusetts, USA)
Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou is a Professor in the International Studies Program at Boston
College and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. A member
of the Global Academic Council of the International Religious Freedom Secretariat, she served
on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Some of her publications include
co-edited volumes on Eastern Orthodoxy and American Higher Education and Thinking through
Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars; white papers and policy briefs, on
“Diplomacy, Geopolitics, and Global Orthodoxy, in the Twenty-First Century” and “Influence
Operations in Greece’s Religious Ecosystem”; and numerous articles in academic and policy.
Her research concentrates on the intersection of geopolitics, religion, and human rights. She
was a delegate consultant of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Holy and Great Council at
Crete in 2016. She is active in policy-practitioner work on the boards of Churches for Middle
East Peace (CMEP), the Freedom of Religion or Belief Women’s Alliance, and the Ecumenical
Patriarchate’s Task Force on Modern Slavery.
