On June 18, 2021, George Cantonis, President of Hellenic College Holy Cross, appointed an Administrative Board for the Pappas Patristic Institute. The Board consists of scholars in the field of patristics and other allied disciplines to serve the Institute during the period from 2021 to 2024. The board is made up of academic professionals from the Boston Theological Consortium, greater New England, and universities in the United States and Greece.
Paul M. Blowers (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, 1988) is the Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History at Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Milligan University (Tennessee). Working primarily in Greek and Byzantine patristics, he is a former President of the North American Patristics Society and a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology. He has authored several books, including Visions and Faces of the Tragic: The Mimesis of Tragedy and the Folly of Salvation in Early Christian Literature (Oxford, 2020), Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford, 2016), and Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford, 2012). Recently, he also coedited The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019).
Fr Magree (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of Theology at Boston College, where he teaches particularly on topics of patristic exegesis of scripture and the influence of such exegesis on fourth and fifth century doctrine. He has devoted special attention to St. Cyril of Alexandria’s understanding of Christ’s kenosis, or self-emptying. He has been gratified to see how the patristic tradition can serve as a point of mutual encouragement in Christ for Christians of many backgrounds and eagerly supports the Pappas Patristic Institute’s work in sharing the riches of that tradition.
Dr. Patitsas is Assistant Professor of Ethics at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, and the interim Dean of Hellenic College. Dr. Patitsas’s doctoral dissertation “The King Returns to His City: An Interpretation of the Great Week and Bright Week Cycle of the Orthodox Church,” treated Holy Week as a currently performed patristic text. It combined work in complexity theory, systematic theology, and the urbanist vision of Jane Jacobs. Dr. Patitsas’ recent book from St. Nicholas Press, The Ethics of Beauty, is a survey of the central role of Beauty in the Orthodox Christian approach to spirituality, theology, and life.
Christos Simelidis is Assistant Professor in Late antique and Byzantine Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He studied Classics and Byzantine Studies at Thessaloniki and Oxford. His research interests include Byzantine scholarship and literary criticism, Greek palaeography and textual criticism, and the reception of Classical and Biblical texts in Byzantine literature. He has published Selected poems of Gregory of Nazianzus (Göttingen, 2009) and his major research project is a critical edition of the Carmina of Gregory of Nazianzus for the Corpus Christianorum series.
Rachel J. Smith (PhD, Harvard University, 2012) is Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Villanova University. She is the author of Excessive Saints: Gender, Narrative, and Theological Invention in Thomas of Cantimpre's Mystical Hagiography (Columbia University Press, 2018) and numerous articles in medieval theology and literature, monasticism, sanctity, women and religion, and medieval mysticism.
Kelley Spoerl is a Professor of Theology at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. She teaches courses in Bible, the Early Church, and Christian Spirituality. She has degrees from Wellesley College, the Harvard Divinity School, and the University of Toronto. She specializes in fourth-century Greek patristic theology, particularly the work of Apollinarius of Laodicea and his influences, including Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Eustathius of Antioch. In 2017, she published, with Dr. Markus Vinzent of Kings College London, a translation of the works of Eusebius of Caesarea against Marcellus of Ancyra.
James C. Skedros is the Michael G. and Anastasia Cantonis Professor of Byzantine Studies at Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. He served as dean of Holy Cross from 2013 to 2018. His teaching, research and publication areas include the history of early and Byzantine Christianity, the lives of early Christian and Byzantine saints, and Christian-Muslim relations. He has published on fourth and fifth-century Patristic authors’ notions of martyrdom. He is a double recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, both for the study of Byzantine saints in Thessaloniki, Greece.
V. Rev. Archimandrite Maximos Constas, PhD [2021-2023]
Director (ex officio)
Rev. George Parsenios, PhD [2021-2023]
Dean of Holy Cross GOST (ex officio)
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