Annelies Lannoy (°1984) studied classical philology and earned her PhD from Ghent University (2012) with a dissertation on the ideas of comparative historians of religions Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy, set against the background of the modernist crisis in the Catholic Church. Since completing her PhD, she has specialized in the epistemological and methodological history of the academic study of religion and in early 20th century French philosophy of religion. In much of her research she has extensively used scientific correspondence as primary documentary evidence, highlighting its value as a unique yet often overlooked window into the historical (ideological, religious, social and political) contexts of knowledge production in the study of religion.
She has conducted research at various universities (currently at the Université de Lausanne), including projects on the development of comparative religion as a scientific discipline in 19th and early 20th century Europe, scientific networks in knowledge production on religion, on comparative historiography of ancient Judaism, Christianity and Greco-Roman religions, and on the philosophy of religion of the excommunicated French priest and later professor at the Collège de France, Alfred Loisy, in relation to that of Henri Bergson and William James.
She co-authored and co-edited “Mon cher Mithra.” La Correspondance entre Franz Cumont et Alfred Loisy, 2 vol., Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 2019) with Corinne Bonnet & Danny Praet, and she authored Alfred Loisy and the Making of History of Religions. A Study of the Development of Comparative Religion in the Early 20th Century (De Gruyter, 2020), which received the 2020 Jan Gillis Award of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts. Other volumes include: The Many Lives of Jesus. Scholarship, Religion, and the Nineteenth Century Imagination, with Cristiana Facchini (2024) and Prophétiser la Religion de l'humanité. La philosophie "post-moderniste" d'Alfred Loisy (1917-1939) (issue of the Revue de théologie et de philosophy, in press 2025) with Frédéric Amsler.