Yury P. Avvakumov
Archbishop Demetrios College Associate Professor of Byzantine Theology
Primary Area: History of Christianity
Biography
Yury P. Avvakumov specializes in medieval church history and theology, with a focus on relations between the papacy and Byzantine Christianity, and in Ukrainian and Russian religious history and theology. He is also broadly engaged with the history, ecclesiology, and liturgy of Byzantine-rite Christianity in communion with Rome from its medieval beginnings to the present day. He graduated in Classics from St. Petersburg University and in Eastern Orthodox Theology from St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy in Russia. In 2001, he received PhD in Catholic Theology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Before coming to Notre Dame in 2010, he served as Dean of Humanities and the founding Chair of the Department of Classical, Byzantine and Medieval Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. Currently, he serves as a member of the Vatican's International Theological Commission. He is also the founder and editor of the book series "Eastern Catholic Studies and Texts" published by the Catholic University of America Press. Prof. Avvakumov has held major fellowships from the Henry Luce Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Research Interests
Medieval ecclesiology and sacramental theology, the papacy and Eastern Churches, Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism, Russian and Ukrainian religious history and theology, theology and music
Selected Publications
Die Entstehung des Unionsgedankens. Die lateinische Theologie des Hochmittelalters in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ritus der Ostkirche (Berlin, 2002).
The Churches and the War: Religion, Religious Diplomacy, and Russia's Aggression against Ukraine. Co-editor with Oleh Turiy (Lviv, 2024).
“The ‘Uniate’ Identity and the Construction of ‘Eastern Orthodoxy’: Reflections on the Confessionalization Process in the Slavic East,” The Catholic Historical Review 111 (2025) 270-333.
“The Renaissance Papacy and Eastern Christianity: Greek and Slavic”, in The Renaissance Papacy 1400-1600, ed. by Nelson Minnich (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025), 259-286 (co-author with Charles C. Yost).
“Sacramental Ritual in Middle and Later Byzantine Theology: Ninth – Fifteenth Centuries,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology. Ed. by H. Boersma and M. Levering (Oxford, 2015), 249-266.
Education
- Dr. theol. from Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany