معرفی
Philip Michael Forness serves as a Senior Lecturer at KU Leuven's Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies within the Research Unit History of Church and Theology. He is an active researcher with numerous ongoing projects through 2029-2032 and maintains membership in LECTIO – KU Leuven Institute for the Study of Text Transmission and the Faculty Council of Theology and Religious Studies.
His research centers on Eastern Christianity with specialized focus on Syriac and Coptic literary traditions, manuscript cultures, and translation history in Late Antiquity. Forness investigates how Eastern Christian communities maintained identity through textual production, particularly examining Syriac Orthodox institutional development, intercultural exchanges, and the transmission of classical heritage within non-Chalcedonian contexts.
Forness's recent publications (all 2025) reveal consistent thematic patterns across multiple disciplines: religious studies, manuscript cultures, and translation history. His work demonstrates sophisticated analysis of Syriac homiletics, epistolary traditions, and the geographical spread of Eastern Christian textual cultures. Key projects include critical editions of Syriac texts, studies of Philoxenus of Mabbug's correspondence, and investigations into Julian the Apostate's reception in Coptic literature.
As an active academic, Forness contributes to major reference works and edited volumes while presenting at international conferences across Europe. His ORCID identifier is 0000-0003-0577-4892.
Forness teaches specialized courses including History of Eastern Christianity (A05G6A), Coptic I (A07N6A), and Coptic II (A07N7A), training students in both historical contexts and linguistic analysis of Eastern Christian traditions. His research methodology combines philological rigor with cultural historical analysis, particularly examining how translation practices shaped religious identity formation in multilingual environments.
