Prof. Dr. Annelies Lannoy

Annelies Lannoy (°1984) is a historian of ideas and of religion. She is especially interested in the history of the academic study of religion and classical philology in 19th and 20th century Europe, as unique windows into the cultural histories of Christianity and Judaism of that time.

Annelies studied classical philology, and obtained her PhD from Ghent University (2012) with a dissertation on the ideas of comparative historians of religions Franz Cumont and Alfred Loisy within the context of the modernist crisis in the Catholic Church. Specializing in archival research and the study of scientific correspondence, she has been carrying out research projects on the making of history of religions as a scientific discipline in 19th and early 20th century Europe, on scientific networks in knowledge production on ancient religions, and on comparative historiography of ancient Judaism, Christianity and Greco-Roman religions.

Recently, 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.