Dr Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

BA, MA, PhD, SFHEA

Pronouns: He/him
  • UG Programme Leader (International Relations, Politics & History)
  • Reader in Politics and International Relations

Alex is officially French, Greek, and now also British. He grew up in Brussels and has lived in England almost continuously since 1997. He therefore feels like a European foreigner everywhere.

He completed his academic studies at the University of Kent, covering disciplines such as Economics (BA), International Relations and European Studies (MA), and Politics and Government with some Theology and Religious Studies (PhD). He worked for both the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University prior to joining Loughborough in 2010.

His research and teaching interests include:

  • Pacifism and nonviolence (especially anarcho-pacifism);
  • Political theory and history of political thought (especially Leo Tolstoy's);
  • Anarchism (especially Christian/religious);
  • Critical security studies and critical terrorism studies;
  • Religion and politics.

He has a keen interest in pedagogical innovations and publishes top essays from his students on Socratic Hive.

He is fluent in French and English, reasonably fluent in Greek, understands (even if he pretends not to) Spanish and Portuguese, and has studied (and hopes to continue trying to learn) Arabic.

Alex’s research interests include:

  • Pacifism and nonviolence (especially anarcho-pacifism);
  • Political theory and history of political thought (especially Leo Tolstoy's);
  • Anarchism (especially Christian/religious);
  • Critical security studies and critical terrorism studies;
  • Religion and politics.

Feel free to contact him to discuss potential research projects and research supervision on any of these themes.

Many of his academic publications are openly/freely accessible online. He keeps a thematic list of his publications here.

Alex has taught on numerous different modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. A full list of modules is available here. At Loughborough, he has taught and either developed or significantly redeveloped final year modules including on ‘State, Violence and Terrorism’ and ‘Politics and Religion’, postgraduate modules including ‘Protest and Resistance’, ‘International Politics: Issues and Policies’, ‘Security in Global Politics’, and first year modules including ‘Contemporary World Arena’ and ‘Introduction to Academic Studies’.

Recent Postgraduate Research Students

  • Imogen Lambert (2023): “Towards the Possibility of Post-Secular Revolution: A Case Study in Syria”
  • Oscar Addis (2021) “The Revolutionary Strategy of Anarchism in Europe and the United States 1868-1939”.
  • Elizabeth Vasileva (2018) “Anarchism, Deleuze and Immanent Ethics
  • Teresa Fernandes Xavier (2017) “The Postanarchist, an activist in a ‘heterotopia’: building an ideal type” 
  • Will Boisseau (2016)  “The Place of Animal Rights in the British Extra-Parliamentary Left”
  • John Nightingale (2015) “The Concept of Solidarity in Anarchist Thought”

Tolstoy’s Political Thought

Christian Anarcho-Pacifist Iconoclasm Then and Now

London: Routledge, 2020

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Christian Anarchism book cover

Christian Anarchism

A Political Commentary on the Gospel

Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010

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Anarchism and Religion book cover

Anarchism and Religion

Anarchism and Religion (2017)

Stockholm University Press 

Edited by: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Matthew Adams

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Anarchism and Religion: Volume II book cover

Anarchism and Religion: Volume II

Anarchism and Religion (2018)

Stockholm University Press 

Edited by: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Matthew Adams

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Anarchism and Religion: Volume III

Anarchism and Religion (2020)

Stockholm University Press 

Edited by: Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Matthew Adams

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  • "An Anarcho-Pacifist Reading of International Relations: A normative critique of international politics from the confluence of pacifism and anarchism", International Studies Quarterly 66/4 (December 2022). [Freely available here.]
  • "A Pacifist Critique of the Red Poppy: reflections on the militaristic drift of British war commemorations", Critical Military Studies (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2021.2014237. [Freely available here.]
  • Tolstoy's Political Thought: Christian Anarcho-Pacifist Iconoclasm Then and Now (Routledge, 2020). [Click here for more information.]
  • "The Subversive Potential of Leo Tolstoy’s ‘Defamiliarisation’: A Case Study in Drawing on the Imagination to Denounce Violence". Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 22/5 (2019): 562-580, Special Issue: Political Violence and the Imagination, eds. Mihaela Mihai and Mathias Thaler. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2019.1565700. [Freely available here.]
  • "Anarchism and Religion", co-authored with Lara Apps, in Brill's Companion to Anarchism and Philosophy, edited by Nathan Jun (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 120-151. [Freely available here.]
  • "Leo Tolstoy’s Anticlericalism in Its Context and Beyond: A Case against Churches and Clerics, Religious and Secular", Religions 7/5 (May 2016): 59. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7050059. [Freely available here.]
  • "The Golden Rule on the Green Stick: Leo Tolstoy's Postsecular International Thought", Towards a Postsecular International Politics: New Forms of Community, Identity, and Power, edited by Luca Mavelli and Fabio Petito (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 81-102. [Freely available here.]
  • Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010). [Click here for more information.]
  • "Leo Tolstoy on the State: A Detailed Picture of Tolstoy's Denunciation of State Violence and Deception", Anarchist Studies 16/1 (Spring 2008) 20-47. [Freely available here (4.2 MB) or here (1 MB).]