Women Scholars of Orthodox Christianity Featuring Kristina Stoeckl

The Orthodox Christian Studies Center is delighted to present the eighth 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.

This episode features an interview with Kristina Stoeckl, professor of sociology at Innsbruck University in Austria. Against an interdisciplinary background of philology, philosophy, international relations, and sociology, she has published books and articles on the post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church and on religion and modernity. Her book, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (2014), became the starting point for a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council. This project, titled Postsecular Conflicts, has examined the connections between the Russian Orthodox Church and global moral conservative networks of the Christian Right in numerous publications.

She is currently working on a monograph (with Dmitry Uzlaner) titled Moralist International: The Russian Orthodox Church in the Global Culture Wars. Together with Aristotle Papanikolaou and Ingeborg Gabriel, she has edited the volume Political Theologies in Orthodox Christianity: Common Challenges – Divergent Positions (2017). Her comparative political sociology of religions approach puts emphasis on actors and processes in order to understand the complex ways in which religious traditions negotiate their relationship with modernity.

The episode will include some time for live audience questions. The Center will archive each episode on its website and YouTube channel.