Rev. Anthony Perkins

Rev. Anthony Perkins is the rector of St. Michael's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Woonsocket, RI; Vocations Director, Associate Dean, and professor at St. Sophia Ukrainian Orthodox Seminary; and a member of the Metropolitan Council and Consistory of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA.  Fr. Anthony previously taught political science for several years at The Ohio State University and the Naval War College.  His areas of academic expertise are in spirituality, comparative politics, and political psychology.  Before being ordained to the priesthood in 2007, Fr. Anthony spent 20 years in the US Army Reserves (Military Intelligence) and several years providing full–time intelligence support to the war in Afghanistan, to include two tours in-country.  He writes and edits the OrthoAnalytika and “Good Guys Wear Black” blogs, writes for the Orthodox Christian Network’s blog, “The Sounding”, and has a long-running independent podcast, OrthoAnalytika.


Dr. Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi

Dr. Eleni Kasselouri-Hatzivassiliadi, PhD is a Lecturer at the Hellenic Open University (Master Program: Studies on Orthodox Theology) and visitor Lecturer at the Department of Pedagogics of Aegean University, Greece (Hermeneutics).  She was a visitor Lecturer at the Departments of Psychology and Pedagogics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2003-2007) and the Institute of Orthodox Theology in Balamand (2009-2010), collaborator of Volos Academy of theological Studies (2006-2011), Vice-President of European Society of Women in Theological Research (1999-2001), a member of the steering group of WCC program Women’s Voices and Visions on Being Church (2002-2006) and a Bible facilitator in Porto Alegre (Brazil, 2006) and Busan (S. Korea, 2013) General Assemblies of WCC. She has been a member of the editorial board of electronic bulletin lectio difficilior, www.lectio.unibe.ch (2000-2006) and the Bulletin of Biblical Studies www.artoszoes.gr (2006-  ).  She is a member of two advisory groups of WCC on Gender and Human sexuality. She has published books and articles in Greek, English, German and Russian. She is married and mother of 3 children.  


Rev. Sava Janjic

Father Sava (Janjic) is Archdeacon of the Decani Monastery in Kosovo. During the Kosovo war of 1999, he became world famous as the 'cyber monk' through www.decani.yunet.com. He provided shelter to refugees, both Albanian and Serbian. After the war, he was spokesman of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohia and member of the Interim Administrative Council of Kosovo. Only a few miles away from the monastery, Serb police and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels have shed each other’s blood in a civil war that has displaced an estimated 200,000 people, killed hundreds, and left many homes in ruin.


Samer Laham

Samer Laham is member of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East (GOPA) based in Damascus, Syria. He was born in Damascus in 1960 and completed his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering at Damascus University.

He was asked to establish a special department called the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (DERD) at GOPA to cover all diaconal and humanitarian needs. DERD has conducted many significant projects in Syria, Lebanon and in the Antioch region in southern Turkey. Programs have included education, restoration, capacity building, agriculture, health, text preservation, construction, and valuable interventions in the areas of green economy, and programs related to violence and conflict resolution.

He was decorated with St Gregorious medallion by HH Patriarch Alexi II and recently with a new decoration of St Sergios medallion (third degree).  Last year he received the international award on humanitarian services from Inter Actions organization in United States.

Married with two boys, he is based in Damascus and conducting his duties from his office at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East.


Dr. Timothy S. Miller

Dr. Timothy S. Miller, PhD has taught history at Salisbury University since 1983. Although trained as a Byzantinist, his primary responsibilities at Salisbury are teaching world history and medieval history. While teaching these general courses, he managed to write three books, all on Byzantine charitable institutions: The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire (first published in 1985, but reissued with corrections and an new introduction in 1997); The Orphans of Byzantium (2003), and Walking Corpses: Leprosy in Byzantium and the Medieval West (2014). John Nesbitt of Dumbarton Oaks co-authored this last book. While working on his dissertation at Catholic University (Washington, DC), he worked at Dumbarton Oaks, first as a junior fellow and then as an employee. His association with that institution has permitted him to continue research while teaching so many general history courses at  Salisbury.


Michel Nseir

Michel Nseir has been working with the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva since September 2007 as Program Executive for the Special Focus on the Middle East. He has developed peace building projects related to the conflict in Israel/Palestine, and worked on facilitating dialogue in Syria. He has a long experience dealing with the churches in the ME. He served as Executive Secretary of the Association of Theological Institutes in the Middle East (ATIME) from 1998 to 2004, and was a lecturer at the Theological Faculty of the University of Balamand from 1996 to 2007.

He holds a Masters degree in Theology from the Saint John of Damascus Faculty of Theology – University of Balamand in Lebanon, and a High Diploma in Biblical Studies from the Catholic Institute of Paris in France (1987-1990). He also worked as Director of the “Association des Etudiants Protestants de Paris” from 1990 to 1996.

He was elected president of SYNDESMOS, the World Fellowship of Orthodox Youth, from 1989 to 1992, and officer for the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) from 1992 to 1996.

He was born in 1961 in Beirut – Lebanon.


Theodore Pritsis

Theodore Pritsis matriculated at Hellenic College in 2001, receiving a bachelor's degree in religious studies in 2005. He received a Master's of Divinity at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in 2009. He received a full scholarship from the Greek Government Scholarship Foundation during the 2007-2008 academic year and studied Byzantine history and Ancient Greek philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He received a Master of Theology in Byzantine history from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. Upon graduation, he served in the Office of the Chief Secretariat at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

He serves the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America’s Office of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Relations as its representative to the United Nations’ “Religions for Peace” North America Interfaith Youth Network.

 


Dr. Audeh Butros Quawas

Dr. Audeh Butros Quawas, MD is a Consultant and Attending Surgeon for clinics and private hospitals in Amman, Jordan (1983- present), worked with Doctors Without Boarders, on the Ramtha Project (June 2013- Dec. 2013), General Director of Rahmeh Hospital, Amman, Jordan (1989-90), Resident Doctor (1982) then Registrar Surgeon (1982-1983) at Evangelismos Hospital, Surgical Department, Athens, Greece, and completed his General Practitioner Internship (1977-78) and Residency (1978-79) at Italian Hospital, Amman, Jordan. He obtained a B.Sc., in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Athens (1977), certified General Surgeon by the Greek Board of General Surgery, University of Athens (1983), and certified Consultant General Surgeon by the Jordan Board of General Surgery, Jordan Medical Council (1985). He was a member of the Jordanian Parliament (June 2003- August 2007) and served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, Culture, Youth (2003-2007), Moderator of the Jordan-Greek Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Committee (2003-2007), Representative of the Jordanian Parliament in the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (2003-2007), and Member of the Parliamentary Network on The World Bank (2003-2007). He currently serves as a WCC Central Committee Member and WCC Executive Committee Member (2013- present).


V. Rev. Dr. Nathanael Symeonides

The Very Reverend Archimandrite Nathanael Symeonides was born in Thessaloniki, Greece (1978), and is a    2000 graduate of Hellenic College (BA) and a 2003 graduate of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology  (MDiv). He holds a ThD in Bioethics and a STM in Christian Ethics from Boston University. Fr. Nathanael has also studied public health and human rights at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He has authored numerous articles in theology and bioethics, and is a guest professor of Christian Ethics at Saint Vladimir Orthodox School of Theology, Fordham University, and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. He is fluent in Greek and English and has a working knowledge of French. He was ordained a Deacon (2003) and a Presbyter (2010) by His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America. He served as a Deacon to the Archbishop from 2006-2010 and as the pastor of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, NYC from 2010-2013. In September of 2013 he was appointed Director of the Office of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America as well as the Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America. He is also the Director of the Archdiocesan Advisory Committee on Science and Technology. He is a brother of the historic monastic community of St. George Epanosifis in Crete, Greece.


Rev. Luke Veronis

Fr. Luke Veronis serves as the Director for the Missions Institute of Orthodox Christianity at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, pastors Sts Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Webster, MA, and teaches as an Adjunct Instructor at both Holy Cross and Hellenic College. He also taught at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (2005-2008).

He has been involved in the Orthodox Church’s missionary movement since 1987. He and his family served as a long-term cross-cultural missionary in Albania for more than 10 years (1994-2004), and as a short-term missionary in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana for 18 months (1987-91). Since 2010, he teaches a summer missions class which he takes to Albania for two weeks. He has led four mission teams from his church to build homes for the desperately poor through Project Mexico.

His published books include Go Forth: A Journal of Missions and Resurrection in Albania (2010) Lynette’s Hope: The Witness of Lynette Katherine Hoppe’s Life and Death (2008) and Missionaries, Monks, and Martyrs: Making Disciples of All Nations (1994).


Joyce Dubensky, Esq.

Joyce Dubensky is the CEO of Tanenbaum, a secular, non-sectarian nonprofit that systematically dismantles religious violence and hatred through Peacemakers in armed conflicts and by tackling religious bullying of students, harassment in workplaces and disparate health treatment for people based on their beliefs. Internationally in demand as a speaker, she trains and leads workshops on all Tanenbaum programs. She has presented at the United Nations, the Interfaith Kosovo 2nd Annual Conference, the Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Human Rights and Religious Freedom, among many others. Most recently, she conducted a training for diplomats on the first day of the UN General Assembly. As an attorney, she served as a national consultant for the Council of Jewish Federations (now Jewish Federations of North America). She also created the Legal Department at the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York and served as its first general counsel for over 10 years.


Dr. Susan R. Holman

Dr. Susan R. Holman, PhD is a scholar and writer in early Christian studies and the history of medicine, whose research focuses on conceptual “translation” of the past and how it continues to shape contemporary religious responses to poverty, hunger, and disease today. After undergraduate studies in nutrition and psychology, she completed a combined Master’s degree and clinical internship at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, followed by experiences as a public health nutritionist in Boston together with advanced studies in religion. She holds an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in religious studies from Brown. She has been an invited speaker nationally and internationally, participating in research groups in Belgium, Jerusalem, as well as the Project on Lived Theology at the University of Virginia, and has served since 2008 as an academic editor and writer in global and public health at Harvard University. She is editor of Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society (BakerAcademic/Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2008) and author of numerous articles, chapters, and five academic books.


Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou

Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou is Professor of History and Director of the Program in East European and Russian Studies at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts, where he teaches on the Balkans, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire.  He received his Ph.D. in East European History at Indiana University and completed his postdoctoral work as a Hannah Seeger Davis Research Fellow in the Program in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.  He is also a former Research Fellow of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe at Harvard University.  He has numerous publications on Greek America and Balkan diasporas, international humanitarian relief in Axis-occupied Greece, and US foreign policy in Southeastern Europe, his scholarship has appeared in collected works and journals, including The Journal of Modern Greek Studies, The Journal of Military and Political Sociology, and Mediterranean Quarterly: A Journal of Global Issues. He has served as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Modern Hellenism.


His Grace Bishop Maxim

His Grace Bishop Maxim (Vasiljevic) was elected Bishop of the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South American at the regular assembly of the Hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, Serbia in 2006. He is ​professor of ​Patristics at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, and was teaching Christian Anthropology and Sociology at the University of East Sarajevo​, and Patristics and Dogmatics at the St. Sava School of Theology in Libertyville, Illinois. He graduated from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, in 1993. He completed his Masters of Theology at the University of Athens in 1996, and then three years later, in 1999, at the same university, he defended his doctorate in the field of Dogmatics and Patristics. He worked for one year on his post-doctorate in Paris and the Sorbonne in 2003-04, in the field of Byzantine History and Hagiography. He ​was the editor of “Theology” – Journal of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade. His scholarly ​books, ​studies​,​ and articles include essays on Holy Fathers and Saints; he has also written on the hagiographical and iconographical themes. He speaks Greek, French, Russian and English.


Hierodeacon Theodore Niklasson

Hierodeacon Theodore Niklasson left a career in venture capital development in the Atlanta and Chicago markets to embrace Orthodox Christianity and the monastic life in the early 1990’s. Previous skills sets channeled his monastic experience into mission, support and social action roles within that fuzzy realm which exists between the monastery gates and the world, whether in California, Alaska, the American inner city or the Caucasus Mountain region of Anatolia. In particular, seven years overseas among Georgian villages offered the occasion to build bridges of cultural exchange and understanding between an insulated traditional Orthodox Christian Body and numerous Western aid organizations. These connections were tested during periodic moments of crisis and conflict, providing opportunities to share experience and explore reactions stemming from the intersection of 21st century problem solving and time-tested provincial wisdom.


Pascalis Papouras

Pascalis Papouras is IOCC’s Special Assistant to the Executive Office & Government Relations.  His current duties include representing IOCC to Congress, the Presidential Administration, the international diplomatic community, policy institutes, the ecumenical and inter-faith community; and he advocates on behalf of IOCC’s beneficiaries and programs.  He currently serves on the Board of Directors of National VOAD, a multi-lateral civil society organization.

With over 15 years of experience in emergency response management, development, and community mobilization, Pascalis has worked in the Middle East, the Caucasus, East Africa, and throughout the United States, where he developed an emergency response network of Orthodox clergy and laity, thus building the capacity of The Church to engage in post-crisis assistance.

He received his BA in History, Classics, and Ancient Greek from Miami University in Oxford, OH, and his MA from The Ohio State University’s Department of Greek and Latin, serving as a Graduate Teaching Assistant.


Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou

Dr. Elizabeth H. Prodromou, PhD is Visiting Associate Professor of Conflict Resolution at The Fletcher School for Law & Diplomacy (Tufts University), where she teaches in the Program in International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.  She is Co-Chair of the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe Study Group at Harvard University’s CES, a scholar-practitioner group exploring the geopolitics of energy and the geopolitics of identity as they relate to the interactions between the Eastern Mediterranean and Europe.  Before coming to Fletcher, she served a senior diplomatic appointment as Vice Chair and Commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (2004-2012).  She is a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Religion & Foreign Policy Working Group, since 2011, serving on the Subgroup on International Religious Freedom, Democracy, and Security in the Middle East and North Africa.  She is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at The Hedayah International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (Abu Dhabi). She holds a Ph.D. and an S. M. in political science from MIT.  She was awarded a Distinguished Service Award by the Tufts University Alumni Association in 2008, and she serves on the editorial boards of several academic and policy journals.  


Dr. Dana Robert

Dr. Dana Robert, PhD is a leading historian of world Christianity and mission. Among her books are American Women in Mission: A Social History of their Thought and Practice (Mercer, 1997), and Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, now in 6th printing).  In 2010 she delivered the keynote address at the Centenary meeting of the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. At the Boston University School of Theology, Robert directs the Center for Global Christianity and Mission (CGCM http://www.bu.edu/cgcm/). Since her undergraduate years at Louisiana State University and graduate work at Yale, she has been interested in “comparative Christianity,” the interaction of Christianity with diverse cultures. She is a Board Member of the Missions Institute of Orthodox Christianity.


Metropolitan Makarios Tillyrides of Kenya

Metropolitan Makarios Tillyrides of Kenya In 1968, he began his studies at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris, France, graduating in 1972. While pursuing his education in Paris, he also studied at the College of France and the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne in Paris. In September 1972, he continued post graduate studies in Church History under Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Dioklea, at Oxford University in Great Britain, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976. He continued his post-doctoral education as a research student at the Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium between the years of 1978 and 1981, studying religion and church history. During this period he was asked in January 1977 by Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus to organize and open an Orthodox seminary in Nairobi, Kenya, thus introducing him to development of Orthodoxy in sub-Saharan Africa. For more than ten years, he participated, as a lay-theologian, in inter-ecclesiastical and inter-Orthodox conferences as well as with various religious organizations in the middle east. On  July  19,  1992, Andreas Tillyrides was  tonsured a  monk,  with  the name Makarios and ordained a deacon in the Church of St Nicholas in Riruta, Nairobi by the Patriarchal Exarch of East Africa, Metropolitan of Accra Petros. His ordination as a deacon was followed on the next day, July 20, by his ordination as a priest. On July 25, 1992, Fr. Makarios was consecrated Bishop of Riruta by Metr. Petros of Accra, Metr. Petros of Axum, and Bishop Theodoros of Uganda. On January 13, 1998, Bp. Makarios was elected Metropolitan Archbishop of Zimbabwe, and then assigned in February 2001 to the see in Nairobi of the Archdiocese of Kenya as Archbishop of Kenya. He is a proficient linguist, speaking, in addition to his native Greek, English, French, Russian, Italian, as well as a number of African dialects.