Anthony Dupont

Charles Deberiotstraat 26 - box 3101
3000 Leuven
Belgium
room: 03.16

tel: +32 16 32 84 64
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Anthony Dupont (°Ghent, 1979) holds three Master degrees from KU Leuven, in the fields of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology. There he defended his doctoral dissertation (2009) as a recipient of the Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek and subsequently obtained two FWO postdoctoral fellowships.

Dupont is a Research Professor (BOFZAP, docent) in Christian Antiquity of the Research Unit History of Church and Theology at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven. He leads a Research Group of ca. 13 researchers, (co-)supervises nine doctoral students and four postdoctoral fellows, and has acted as the (co-)supervisor of nine completed doctorates. Dupont frequently serves as an external member of doctoral dissertation committees (nine at KU Leuven, eight abroad). In 2013 he received the Research Council Award in Humanities and Social Sciences KU Leuven, and he has been successful in acquiring competitively awarded funding (FWO, MSCA, Pegasus, BOF).

He is dedicated to international mobility. As a young scholar he spent two funded research semesters at the Academia Belgica (Rome). He has co-organized many international conferences (ca. 25) and is frequently invited as a (key note) speaker at international conferences (ca. 70 delivered papers, with an invited keynote lecture at the Oxford Patristic Conference last August as culmination point). Dupont’s publications include two monographs, co-edited scientific volumes (eleven, and three in progress), ample articles (ca. 80), and numerous contributions (ca. 25) in the most important scientific journals and series in his discipline. Dupont’s commitment to science communication is evidenced by his responsibility for several annual study days geared towards a broad audience (‘Augustinusdag’ and ‘Quo vadis patrologia?’), his numerous book reviews (ca. 140), his national publications (ca. 25) and public lectures (ca. 15, amongst others ‘Les voor de 21ste eeuw/Class for the 21st century’ at KU Leuven, course of 2021), as well as two Dutch translations of scientific monographs. In all of these outward-facing activities, Dupont aims to contextualize and explain the diversity of Early Christianity. 

Dupont belongs to the Editorial Boards of the journals Augustiniana and Louvain Studies, and series, including: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia, Subsidia Maximiana, and LECTIO. He serves as the Editor-in-chief of Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia, as Secretary of the Augustinian Historical Institute, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Jansenism and Augustinianism. He is board member of Kosmoi and Lectio, and member of scholarly societies (NAPS, AAR, and SBL), and serves as Belgium’s national correspondent for the AIEP/IAPS. In January 2021 he was invited to serve as expert in the FWO Cult 4 Project Panel on Theology and Religion Sciences. In 2019, the doctoral students of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies elected him as their spokesperson (ombuds). He furthermore serves as Faculty Diversity Supervisor, and as Faculty Ombuds (Sexual) Unacceptable Behavior.

Dupont’s research combines the study of ancient philosophy and Early Christian thought. He is interested in how late-antique theorists addressed an old existential question: What is the relationship between human autonomy and divine heteronomy? His research focuses on divine grace and human freedom in the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Previous scholarship has portrayed Augustine as exceedingly pessimistic about human nature: to many, Augustine has seemed to believe that humans, by themselves, can achieve nothing good. Dupont has asked whether this grim depiction is correct. The breakthrough in his research came from the rediscovery of an extensive part of Augustine’s work that was previously dismissed by scholars: the sermones ad populum. Dupont’s multidisciplinary approach to these neglected texts has resulted in a new understanding of Augustine’s teachings about the concept of grace.

More broadly, Dupont is interested in Christian sermons as an emerging literary genre. His dissertation, for example, drew scholarly attention to sermons as sources of rhetorically enacted theology and philosophy. Dupont is also co-organiser and co-editor of the Ministerium Sermonis conferences (Leuven, Rome, Malta, Leuven) and resulting publications (IPM, Brepols 2010, 2012, 2016, 2021), which examine the content, transmission, and reception of ancient Christian sermons. Together with Gert Partoens, Shari Boodts, and Johan Leemans, Dupont published Preaching in the Patristic Era (NHS 6, Brill 2018).

Augustine’s political thinking, particularly as developed in what is called the Donatist controversy as well as in Augustine’s massive work, De ciuitate Dei, is another area of Dupont’s interest. Dupont was in charge of The Uniquely African Controversy, a conference and anthology on Donatist North Africa (LAHR 9, Peeters 2014), and together with colleagues Gert Partoens, and Andrea Robiglio, he is promoter of the interdisciplinary C1-project ‘Magnum opus et arduum’, which studies the political content, transmission history, and Italian-Renaissance reception of De ciuitate Dei. In this domain, he co-edited a Studia Patristica volume dedicated to De ciuitate Dei (Peeters 2021), and a two-volume work dealing with Augustine’s thought on war and peace (Universitaria Agustiniana 2018-2019).

The Medieval reception of Augustine extends the aforementioned research interests. In this domain, Dupont, along with Gert Partoens, has received a grant for a BOF-project entitled Augustine’s Paul through the eyes of Bede and organized a conference and anthology on medieval Augustinian florilegia (Flores Augustini, SSL, Peeters 2020). Dupont also collaborated at the Lectio volume Authority Revisited: Towards Thomas More and Erasmus in 1516 (Brepols 2020). Together with Andras Handl, Dupont oversees a material religion study of the Vatican Library’s so-called Hippolytos statue, which is the earliest known example of a Christianised free-standing sculpture. The study combines petrographic analysis, 3D-scanning, and epigraphy, in addition to analysing the written testimonies about the statue’s [Christian] origin and Renaissance reconstruction. 

Currently Dupont is researching the concepts of sin and grace in ancient North Africa, the topic of his BOFZAP-project. In this domain, he obtained in 2018 an FWO project named Reception of John’s Gospel in North Africa (c. 325-533). With Jonathan Yates he is editing The Bible in Christian North Africa (HBR 4: 1-2, De Gruyter 2019, 2021), with Brian Matz and Giulio Malavasi he initiated an Oxford Handbook on the Pelagian controversy.

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