LAWRENCE E. SULLIVAN, PH.D. is Professor Emeritus and Faculty Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, where he was Professor of World Religions and Professor of Anthropology from 2004 - 2012. From 2010 -2013 he was President and CEO of the Fetzer Institute, a global operating foundation where he is now Senior Fellow. From 1990–2004, he served as Director of the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, an international research center, and taught as Professor of World Religions at Harvard.

Sullivan is Lifetime Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past-President of the American Academy of Religions, and former Deputy Secretary-General of the International Association for the History of Religions. He completed his PhD in the comparative history of religions at the University of Chicago under the direction of Mircea Eliade and later taught there.

Awards. Sullivan’s book, Icanchu’s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions received best book awards from the Association of American Publishers and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the Associate Editor of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion, which received the Hawkins Prize and the Dartmouth Medal from the American Library Association for the best work in any category of publishing. The Religions of Humanity book series, which Sullivan wrote with Julien Cardinal Ries of Belgium, is published in thirteen languages and received the Hans Christian Andersen Prize (Premio Andersen) for the Best Popular Series in Youth Literature. In 2008–2011, as Fellow-in-Residence at the Eranos Foundation founded by Carl Jung in Ascona Switzerland, Sullivan designed and hosted ‘Dialogues on the Transformative Power of Love,’ published in the 70th Eranos Jahrbuch (Einsiedeln, Daimon Verlag).

Recent publications include “The Beauty of Love and Forgiveness?” in Finding Beauty in the Other: Theological Reflections across Religious Traditions. Edited by Peter Casarella and Mun’im Sirry. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2019. “Arvores sagrados no Libano e nas culturas indígenas no Brasil,” in Diálogo das Civilizações: Cultura e Passagens. Saõ Paulo, Brazil: Editora UNIFESP, 2017, pp. 150-175. “Il denaro come segno divinatorio” in Soul Between Enchantment and Disenchantment / L’Anima tra incanto e disincanto. Eranos Jahrbücher vol 72. Edited by Fabio Merlini and Riccardo Bernardini. Einseideln: Daimon Verlag, 2016, pp. 141-165. “Contemplating Love and Forgiveness in Contemporary Exemplars: The Lebanon Dialogues,” in The Dialogical Nature of Love and Forgiveness: Interreligious and Intercultural Reflections. Louaizé, Lebanon: Notre Dame University Press, 2015, pp. 175-206. The book Religions of the World: An Introduction to Culture and Meaning (Fortress Press, 2013). “Love in Action,” a video recording of Sullivan’s Keynote Address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, the Alma Mater of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, delivered on the occasion of Sullivan’s induction into the King Collegium of Scholars in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr International Chapel on April 4, 2013, the 45th anniversary of the death of MLK.

Commercial Corporate Executive. Sullivan is Co-Founder of Chiefofstaff.com, an international commercial software company that designs b2b SAAS software for strategy management in complex organizations; and President of NRAH, the global software company’s business vertical for NGOs, Religious, Academic, and Healthcare organizations. Sullivan is Chairman of the David Arthur Foundation, Chiefofstaff.com’s corporate responsibility arm for autism lifecycle solutions.