Efstathios C. Lianos Liantis serves as Associate Professor of the Geopolitics of Religion & Religious Diplomacy in the Department of Social Theology and Religious Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His work moves across frontiers where belief, power and memory interact: the bearing of religious factors upon diplomacy and international relations; the making of religious and cultural identities; the history and theology of the Orthodox Church in the post-Byzantine centuries; and the religious life of confessional communities living under Islamic law in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans.

From 2016 to 2019, he held public office as Special Secretary for Religious and Cultural Diplomacy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In that capacity, he chaired the National Committee for the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (2016), coordinating the efforts of state and ecclesiastical bodies in the run-up to the pan-Orthodox synodical gathering. He was designated the Ministry’s representative for the visit of the Patriarchal Exarchate to Mount Athos, during deliberations on intra-Athonite matters.

Greece first appointed him Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism and Preserving the Memory of the Holocaust; concurrently (2016-2021) he headed the Greek Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the intergovernmental body charged with education, research and the preservation of the record of humanity’s gravest crime. He is a founding member of the Holocaust Museum of Greece. Acting on his recommendations as Envoy, Greece adopted IHRA’s working definitions concerning antisemitism and the protection of Holocaust memory, thereby providing the legal scaffolding for a national strategy. At the Ferrara Plenary in 2018, the IHRA entrusted Greece with its annual Presidency for 2021. He represented the Hellenic Republic in the European Commission’s Working Group on combating antisemitism and in relevant OSCE summits, and served as national representative to the International Conferences of Special Envoys and Coordinators for Combating Antisemitism (Council of the EU Presidency).

Alongside these roles runs a scholarly and editorial career: he has overseen Greek and foreign publications in Classics and the Humanities (Law, Philosophy, Theology, History, Linguistics, Religious Studies, among others), and organised academic conferences and events in Greece and abroad. He sits on the Culture Committee of the American-Hellenic Chamber of Commerce. He has designed and coordinated cultural and educational initiatives with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Ancient Patriarchates of the East, the Church of Greece, the Chief Rabbinate of Athens, and official authorities of other religious denominations.

In his research capacity, Professor Liantis is the Principal Investigator for the Erasmus+ Programme, Unity in Diversity: Promoting Religious Inclusivity in Greek Muslim Education (UPRISE), a project addressing religious inclusion for Muslim pupils in Western Thrace. He also co-authored the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant Proposal, ‘Thessaloniki from the 13th to the 18th Cent.: A City of Nations, Religions and Cultures’ (2013), and was a researcher for the project ‘The Hierarchs of the Orthodox Church of America and their contribution to dialogue with the contemporary world’ (2014-2017) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

His books include Saints of God, Servants of the Nation: Religion, Diplomacy and Politics in the Formation of National Archetypes (with a foreword by Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece) and Measure of Reconciliation: The Post-Byzantine Theological Diplomacy of Maximos Margounios (with a preface by Metropolitan Geron of Chalcedon Emmanuel).