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Justin Smith

Learn more about Justin's background, education, and academic focuses.

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Assistant Professor

Justin Smith

St. Tikhon's Seminary Professor, Justin Smith

Justin Smith

Assistant Professor

Church History & Historical Theology


Ph.D. Candidate, University of Notre Dame (ABD) | M.A., Classics, University of Notre Dame | Th.M., Historical Theology, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology | M.A., Biblical Exegesis, Bethlehem College and Seminary | B.A., Bible/Theology, Wheaton College

Justin Michael Smith is a Byzantinist who specializes in East-West Christian relations in the Late-Byzantine period (1261–1453). The focus of his doctoral research, advised by Alexis Torrance, is the personality, thought, and work of St. Mark Eugenikos (1394/5–1446), the Metropolitan Bishop of Ephesus, who is best known for his rejection of the union of Ferrara–Florence (1438–1439) and his subsequent resistance to imperial pressure to enforce that union upon the Byzantine Church. Justin, like Mark, has studied Classics, Scripture, and Church history. Unlike Mark, Justin hails from the great state of Tennessee.

Academic Profile

Research Interests

Byzantine history | Ecclesiastical history and conciliar theology | East-West Christian relations | Late-Byzantine Renaissance

Recently Scholarly Activity

  • Oxford Greek Palaeography Summer School at Lincoln College (Christos Simelidis)
  • Advanced Intermediate Summer Program, School of Modern Greek Language, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  • Teaching Assistant and Guest Lecturer, Byzantine History (Alexander Beihammer) and Early Christian and Byzantine Art (Robin Jensen)
  • “Delineating the Divine: St. Theodore the Studite’s Development of Aristotelian Homonymy in the Antirrhetici Tres Adversus Iconomachos,” Lines, Flows, and Forms: The Forty-Eighth Annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium 2023
  • Presidential Fellowship, University of Notre Dame