WHO IS THIS GUY?

When my kids ask what I do for a living, I tell them that I write books. When grown-ups ask the same questions, I explain that I am an academic scholar, researcher, and university pedagogue. And when I ask the question myself, I tend to believe that I am a philosopher-theologian who loves to read and write. But seriously: Who is Martin Koci?

I was born in 1987 in Prague, Czech Republic. I am Associate Professor at the Institute of Fundamental Theology and Dogmatics, KU Linz (Austria). Before, I worked as a researcher at the Institute for Philosophy, the University of Vienna on the project “Revenge of the Sacred: Phenomenology and the Ends of Christianity in Europe” funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). In 2016, I obtained my PhD from KU Leuven (Belgium). The years in Leuven were extraordinary from both the professional and personal perspective. Moreover, I had the privilege to work there as a research assistant in the research group Theology in a Postmodern Context. After graduation from Leuven, I was granted a Junior Jan Patočka Fellowship at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna (Austria). Between 2017-2018, I briefly returned to the Czech Republic and was a post-doc at Charles University in Prague. Since 2019, I have been working and living with my wife Katerina and two kids in Vienna. 

My research focus is phenomenology and theology. I am interested in the postmodern condition of religion. I explore the so-called theological turns in continental philosophy and have the ambition to write a philosophical theology. I find myself at the frontiers of disciplines that never fails to provoke my colleagues. I find interest in introducing theological dialogue with phenomenological concepts. My recent research questions include: What comes after the end of Christianity? Where is the body in contemporary theology? And I grapple with finitude as the foundation of theological grammar and the world as a theological problem. 

I am the author Christianity after Christendom Bloomsbury 2023) and of the award-winning Thinking Faith after Christianity (SUNY Press 2020), and the editor of multiple volumes. I published widely in international journals and presented my work all over the world. I received the Book Prize for the Theological Book of the Years 2019-2020 from the European Society for Catholic Theology and the Prize for the best academic essay on “The Fate of Metaphysics” from The International Journal for Philosophy and Theology (Routledge) in 2018. I was a guest on multiple podcasts I gave interviews about my work and life of a theologian/philosopher to East-West Church Report and Theology Research News.