Alexander Lingas, Music Director and founder of Cappella Romana, is Professor of Music at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge, UK), and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Performing Arts at City St George’s, University of London. Having first come to St Vladimir’s Seminary in 1990 for a semester of doctoral course work in patristics and liturgical theology, Alexander Lingas remained for the next three decades a regular visit to campus for research, conferences, and guest lectures (notably including 2004 Schmemann Lecture). After hosting Dr Lingas as Artist in Residence for Spring 2023, the seminary appointed him Professor of Music and Associate Director of its Institute of Sacred Arts. For the Fall Term of 2024, Dr Lingas is based at UCLA as Visiting Professor in the Department of Music and Artist in Residence of Gefyra, a collaboration of the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. 

Dr Lingas completed his doctorate on Sunday matins in the rite of Hagia Sophia at the University of British Columbia and then, with the support of an SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, moved to Oxfordshire to study theology with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. From 1997 to 2021 he was a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. His present work embraces not only historical study but also ethnography and performance. His awards include Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the British Academy’s Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship, research leave supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the St. Romanos the Melodist medallion of the National Forum for Greek Orthodox Church Musicians (USA). In 2018 His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, bestowed on him the title of Archon Mousikodidáskalos. His Eminence Metropolitan Teofan of the Metropolis of Moldavia and Bukovina awarded him the Moldavian Cross in 2019. In 2023 Dr Lingas formed and directed the Byzantine Chant Ensemble for the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla. 

Educational Background

• B.A., Portland State University
• Ph.D., University of British Columbia