Distance Learning Tutors

Revd Dr Demetrios Bathrellos

Revd Dr Demetrios Bathrellos is a Visiting Professor and Distance Learning Tutor for the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies. Father Demetrios received his doctorate in Systematic Theology from Kingís College, London and is the author of The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature and Will in the Christology of St. Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: OUP, 2004).


Revd Dr Liviu Barbu

Revd Dr Liviu Barbu is a Distance Learning Tutor at IOCS. Father Liviu has also taught and supervised at postgraduate level in the fields of contemporary Orthodox Theology, Systematics, Practical and Pastoral Theology. He is an Orthodox priest, Rector of Martyr Philothea and Saint Bede Parish in Norwich. Father Liviu earned a PhD in Theology from King’s College London and has lectured and published on Pastoral Theology, in particular on spiritual direction and formation in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.


Father Patrick Ramsey

Father Patrick Ramsey

Father Patrick Ramsey is a priest-monk from New Zealand, who is now serving in the UK in the Western Rite Vicarate of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. He earned a PhD from Winchester University in Orthodox Theology in the field of ecclesiology with a thesis presenting a model of the Church based on relationships within the Church. Previously, he graduated with a MTh in Orthodox Theology from the University of Wales, Trinity St David. His Master’s thesis, on the Clergy of the Church focusing on the “minor orders” and deaconesses, has been published as a book and translated into Romanian and Greek and received a good review. His special interests are in the hierarchies of the Church particularly the relations of the primary bishops in the Church but also extending down to relations with local churches and parishes and also that of monasteries and families, and in the Trinity, especially in regard to the intra-Trinitarian relations. He has a deep interest in the liturgy and enjoys studying medieval and pre-medieval liturgical manuscripts of both eastern and western liturgical rites. He has spent time on Mt Athos gaining experience of monastic spiritual life and practice.


Revd Dr Alexander Tefft

Revd Dr Alexander Tefft is a Tutor for the Distance Learning Courses, as well as Chaplain of IOCS.

A graduate of St. Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in the USA, he is Parish Priest of the Orthodox Parish of Saint Botolph, meeting at St. Botolph-Without-Bishopsgate, London, near Liverpool Street. He is Assistant to the Dean of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland and theological advisor to its ordination committee.

A Canadian resident in London, Fr. Alexander has served in parishes of both Slavic and Byzantine tradition. He has been a Commonwealth Scholar at Oxford University and has taught Orthodox dogmatics and history in Canada, the USA, and the UK since 1991.

His main research interests focus on ecclesiology, specifically the dogmatic foundations of the Orthodox Church and the heresy of phyletism, the concept of a national church. Since 2004, he has been a tutor at the Institute and taught the MA in-house course on Orthodox apologetics.


Revd Dcn David-John Williams

Rev. Dcn. David-John Williams is a Distance Learning Tutor of IOCS. He is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Saint Katherine (US). His research areas include Byzantine relations with the West from 600-1453, Greek Palaeography and Shared Sacred Space.

His MA dissertation investigated the contribution of the canons of the Quinisext Council (629) to anti-heretical literature and the schism between the Byzantine and Latin Churches. His PhD thesis is entitled Shared Sacred Spaces: Saints, Relics and Sacred Objects in the Byzantine Mediterranean. Recent publications include: “The Use of Memory to Re-Found Hagia Sophia” in Koinonia II, 2020 “Did The Crusades Change the Byzantine Perception of Holy War?” in Porphyra, “Mediterranean Religion”, Duke University, “Christian Saints as allies of non Christians” and “Did Byzantium practice Holy War?” Orthodoxes Forum, University of Munich. Professor Williams has taught courses in History, the Integrated Core and Humanities at USK since 2016 and was appointed Chair of INT in 2020. As thesis advisor he has supervised eight senior thesis students with topics ranging from Orthodox theology, the Crusades, and modern history, to Viking studies. He is a member of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America, The Medieval Academy of America, The Society For the Promotion Promotion of Byzantine Studies, the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, The Society of St Shenoudah the Archimandrite, The Association of Anglican and Eastern Churches, The Royal Holloway Centre for the GeoHumanities, an associate of The International Society for Science and Religion, a contributing editor to the University of London Working Seminar on Editing Byzantine Texts, a member and frequent participant in the Mediterranean Seminar of the University of Colorado.