Sean Griffin is Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

His research focuses on the history of the Orthodox Church and its role in the sacralization of political power: from the liturgy and chronicles of medieval Kyiv to the arthouse cinema and wartime propaganda of Putin's Russia.

Griffin’s newest book, The Patriarch’s War: Kirill Gundiaev and the Forty-Year Battle for Ukraine, tells the story of modern Russian Orthodoxy through the rise of its most powerful and polarizing leader. It uncovers the deep religious origins of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and reveals how Patriarch Kirill has mobilized sacred memory to sanctify Putin’s holy war. Blending intellectual biography with political history, the book offers the first full account of how Kirill has taken the figures of Christ and Mary and fashioned from them the gods of war.

Griffin’s first book, The Liturgical Past in Byzantium and Early Rus, was published with Cambridge University Press. The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. The study analyzes how these rituals shaped their writing of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the first written history of the East Slavs. The Liturgical Past was the winner of two international book awards: the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize and the Ecclesiastical History Society Book Prize.

Griffin completed his PhD in Slavic Studies at UCLA. His research has been supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, the Dartmouth Society of Fellows, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the ACLS-Luce Foundation, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.