Mihail Neamtu is a Romanian author and public intellectual in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. In the past, he lectured at the University of Bucharest in the Graduate Program for Comparative Religious Studies, but also at Acton University in Michigan, USA. For a few years, he was also research director at the Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Past and the Memory of the Romanian Exile. In the realm of business, he is the founder and CEO of Marile Cărți (Great Books), a successful educational company and publishing house.
Born in Transylvania in 1978, Mihail Neamtu is a prolific and highly active figure in Eastern European intellectual life, particularly well-known in Romania for his public speaking, writingand socio-political commentary. He has authored more than a dozen books on theological, political, biographical and literary themes that reflect his passion for classical education and the foundational values of Western civilization.
Mihail has built his successful career on a sound education: he has a BA in Philosophy (with honors) from the University of Babeș-Bolyai (Cluj, Romania), and an MA in Theology from Durham University (UK) where his research thesis focused on the “Theology and Language in St. Gregory of Nissa”. He was also a visiting student at the University of Munich’s Department of Catholic Theology and a research fellow at the New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Studies (Bucharest, Romania). In 2008, Mihail Neamtu obtained his PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from King’s College London, which had also awarded him the Colin Gunton Prize for Essay in Theology in 2005.
With a philosophical and theological background and a PhD degree, Mihail Neamtu turned to teaching and became a visiting professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Bucharest where he led seminars in Comparative Religion. His expertise was also called upon at the University of Arad (Romania) as a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and as a non-resident research fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, working within the Cold War International History Project. Around this time he also became director for academic programs at the Bucharest-based Institute for the Investigation of the Communist Past and for the Memory of the Romanian Exile.
Mihail Neamtu continued to add to his education and professional expertise through several prestigious research fellowships and grants won from institutions such as the Ratiu Foundation in London, Renovabis Stiftung in Germany and Christ Church College, University of Oxford. Overall, his research and teaching activities revolved around religion and modern ideologies, political theology, early Christianity, hermeneutics of religion and French phenomenology, ethics and dissident movements in Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s.
Although only in his 40s, Mihail’s prodigious writing activity has already produced an extensive body of works from books to scholarly articles and essays, not to mention articles in a variety of media publications. His writings seek to contribute to contemporary society’s understanding of the role of Christianity in establishing civilization across Europe and how Marxist doctrines have mutilated the spirituality of the world. Moreover, Mihail Neamțu’s work combines philosophy and theology to explain the moral decline of socio-political life in our time. These themes are examined at length in his books dedicated to the subject of love, which look at the concepts of Eros and Agape.
In recent years, Mihail Neamțu has also turned to entrepreneurship, creating a successful Public Speaking and Leadership school where he teaches the art of oratory through the use of cultural and marketing strategies.
Estera Dalca
