Christoph Markschies

Christoph Markschies is Professor of Ancient Christianity at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and President of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. He studied Protestant Theology, Classics and Philosophy in Marburg, Jerusalem, Munich and Tübingen, received his doctorate in Tübingen in 1991 and completed his habilitation there in 1994. After professorships in Jena and Heidelberg, he has taught at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2004; from 2006 to 2010, he served as President of the university. He has been a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2000, served as its Vice President from 2012 to 2018, and has been its President since 2020. Since 2022, he has also served as President of the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities and was confirmed in this office in 2025.

His research focuses on Ancient Christianity in the religious, intellectual and institutional contexts of the Roman imperial period and late antiquity. Particular emphasis lies on the relationships between Christianity, Judaism, ancient philosophy and the educational cultures of the ancient world. Markschies combines perspectives from theology, religious history, intellectual history and institutional history. His scholarly interests furthermore include the edition of Greek Christian texts, especially those relating to Origen, the history of ancient biblical exegesis, Gnosticism, the history of scholarship in his field, and questions concerning the reception history of Ancient Christianity up to the present.

Christoph Markschies holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Sibiu, Oslo and the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He is a member or corresponding member of numerous national and international academies, including the academies in Erfurt, Heidelberg and Mainz, the Academia Europaea, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Academia Ambrosiana in Milan and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; he is also a corresponding member of the German Archaeological Institute. He has held fellowships at several Institutes for Advanced Study, including in Jerusalem and Princeton, and has repeatedly been Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Oxford. Since 2024, he has been Distinguished Fellow of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

His distinctions include the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, the Theological Prize of the Salzburger Hochschulwochen, the Order Pour le mérite for Sciences and Arts, and the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Alongside his research, Markschies has for many years taken on leading responsibilities in academic advisory boards, boards of trustees and major collaborative research projects, and has also helped shape the institutional landscape of German scholarship.