SRDJAN MAKSIMOVIC 2025-26 NEH DISTINGUISHED FELLOW IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES
The Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University is pleased to introduce its NEH Distinguished Fellows in Orthodox Christian Studies for the 2025-26 academic year. Numbering among them, together with Alexis Torrence, the Archbishop Demetrios Associate Professor of Byzantine Theology at the University of Notre Dame, and Zachary Oliver, a 4th year DPhil (Ph.D) candidate reading Theology at the University of Oxford, is Srdjan Maksimovic, PhD Candidate at Fordham University.
Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, each year the Center invites applications for a Faculty Fellowship and Dissertation Completion Fellowship in Orthodox Christian Studies. The Center welcomes fellows from all humanities disciplines whose projects focus on some aspect of the history, thought, or culture of Orthodox Christianity and contribute to fostering Orthodox Christian studies as a discipline in its own right.
Dissertation Completion Fellows
Srdjan Maksimovic is a Ph.D. candidate in Theology at Fordham University, specializing in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity. His dissertation, “Christ the Refugee: Matthew 2:13-23 in the Context of the Contemporary Global Migrant Crisis,” explores the Church’s theological and ethical responsibilities toward migrants by placing early Christian interpretations of Christ’s flight into Egypt in dialogue with present-day refugee realities. At its core, the project asks: How does Orthodox theology articulate its duty toward the displaced in light of Matthew 2?
Combining scriptural exegesis, patristic commentary, and ethnographic fieldwork in refugee communities and archives, including the Patriarchal Library of Alexandria and the Selakovac Refugee Centre, this research presents Christ’s exile as a defining paradigm of divine solidarity with the displaced. Reframing the Church as a people in exile, formed not by civic permanence but by mystical communion, the dissertation develops a liturgically rooted theology of sanctuary. It challenges Orthodox theology to reckon with its eschatological origins in migration and its enduring responsibility to those in flight. Maksimovic’s work bridges Orthodox theology, refugee ethics, and public discourse, proposing Christ the Refugee as a theological key for confronting displacement in a world on the move.
Srdjan, with the blessings of His Grace Bishop Irinej of Washington-New York and Eastern America, serves as Coordinator of the Diocesan Education Commission of the Eastern American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Source: Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University
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