Women Scholars in Orthodoxy: Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe

The Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University is delighted to present the next episode of its webinar series highlighting the scholarly insights and academic careers of female scholars whose research and writing explore some facet of the history, thought, or culture of Orthodox Christianity. The broadcast will be livestreamed and open to all who have pre-registered. The event will include some time for live audience questions. For those who miss the live event, the center will archive each episode on its website and YouTube channel. This episode features a conversation with Aleksandra Djuric Milovanovic and Ashley Purpura.

About the Speakers
Aleksandra Đurić-Milovanović, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, Serbia. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade and completed her master’s studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. In 2010, she joined the Institute for Balkan Studies SASA as a research assistant, and since 2018 she has served as a senior research associate. Since 2016, she has been collaborating with the University College of Cork’s Department of Religious Studies, where she served as a visiting professor in 2017 from  August to November. In 2017, she was selected as a participant in the International Fellow Program KAICIID: Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue. Since 2021, she has been a member of the Scientific Committee for Religious Freedom in Barcelona at the Ramon Llull University. She has participated in numerous scientific conferences, published three monographs and one manual, edited an international collection of papers, and published—as an author or co-author—a number of papers in journals and collections in Serbian, English, Romanian and Russian. Her research interests include religious minorities, religion and migration, Orthodox Christian renewal movements, Evangelicals, and interreligious dialogue. Her recent book, co-edited with Radmila Radić, Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), explores the changes underwent by the Orthodox Churches of Eastern and Southeastern Europe as they came into contact with modernity through diverse and interdisciplinary contributions.

Ashley Purpura is an associate professor of religious studies in Purdue University’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies; a faculty fellow of the Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Program; and the director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Purdue University. She is the author of God, Hierarchy, and Power: Orthodox Theologies of Authority from Byzantium (Fordham University Press, 2018), and co-editor of Orthodox Tradition and Human Sexuality (Fordham University Press, 2022). Purpura’s current research projects focus on rethinking assumptions about women, gender, and otherness in light of Orthodox sources, traditions, and theology.