Alfons Brüning new director

Starting 1 January 2022, Prof. Alfons Brüning is the director of the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies.

Alfons Brüning studied Slavic Philology, East European and European History at the Universities of Münster (D) and Freiburg (D) from 1988 to 1995. From 1996, he was PhD candidate at the Osteuropa-Institut of Freie Universität Berlin (D), and part time assistant at the publishing house Herder, Freiburg, involved in a large dimensioned book project on the history of Christianity. In 2005 he received his PhD at Freie Universität Berlin with a thesis on “´Unio non est unitas´- Polen-Litauens Weg im konfessionellen Zeitalter (1569-1648)”.

Between 2005 and February 2007 he was assistant professor at the Ecumenical Institute of the university of Münster (D). In march 2007 he became assistant professor and staff member of the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. 1 January 2022 he became director of this institute, located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Alfons Brüning´s special interest is devoted to the history of church and culture of the European Christian East since the Early Modern period, particularly of Russia and the borderland region between Eastern and Western Christianity, on the territory of present Lithuania, Belarus and especially Ukraine. He has a special interest in orthodoxy and the human rights discourse.