Lecturer in Theology

Anna Chrysostomides

  • I am a historian of late Antiquity and early Islam in the eastern Mediterranean and the territories beyond towards Iran, with a focus on Christian-Muslim relations and conversion to Islam.

  • I hold a DPhil from the University of Oxford in the Faculty of Theology and Religion.

  • Before joining Trinity, I was a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham.

  • I am also currently a lecturer in Islamic History at Queen Mary, University of London.

Anna Chrysostomides

Teaching

At the undergraduate level, I teach Religion and Religions (first year), Classical Islam (second year), Contemporary Islam (second year), and the Further Studies in Islam paper (third year). I have also supervised undergraduate dissertations for the Faculty of Theology and Religion (third year).

Research

My primary research interests cover the social dynamics of conversion between Christianity and Islam from the 8th through the 10th centuries CE as well as shared practices and beliefs between these two faiths. I am particularly interested in people who vacillated between Christianity and Islam, and social situations which would have engendered people identifying with both religions, such as inter-religious marriages, children of those unions, Christian mawālī of Muslims, and Christian slaves of Muslims.

Selected Publications

‘ “There is no god but God”: Islamisation, and Religious Code Switching, eighth to tenth centuries’, in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, ed. A.C.S. Peacock (Edinburgh University Press, 2017)

‘Creating a theology of icons in Umayyad Palestine: John of Damascus’ Three treatises on the divine images’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (forthcoming: 2020)

‘John of Damascus’ Theology of Icons in the Context of 8th century Abrahamic Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers (forthcoming: November 2021)

‘ “There’s no Harm in it’: Muslim attendance of Christian festivals (700-900 CE)’, al-Masaq, (forthcoming: January, 2021)

The Islamization of the Medieval Near East: Dynamics of Conversion in Early Islam (Princeton University Press: Forthcoming)

Subjects
Philosophy and Theology
Theology and Religion
Dr Chrysostomides
anna.chrysostomides@theology.ox.ac.uk
Pronoun
She/her/hers