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Travis W. Proctor, Ph.D.
Travis W. Proctor, Ph.D.
Travis W. Proctor is a scholar and public educator of the bible and early Christianity. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies (with honors) from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he studied under Bart D. Ehrman and specialized in early Christianity and ancient Mediterranean religions.
Prior to earning his Ph.D., he graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in Religious Studies and minoring in Classics. He also studied at Oxford University for two terms in Spring 2009. He is originally from Fort Scott, Kansas.
Dr. Proctor is currently Associate Professor of Religion at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where he has also served as Program Coordinator of the Religion program.
For 2025-2026, Dr. Proctor is serving as the Goheen Research Fellow at the National Humanities Center in Durham, North Carolina. He is pursuing research on early Christian portrayals of Jesus, with a focus on how understandings of animals and spirits were significant for the earliest "Christologies."
Dr. Proctor's teaching and research draw from religious studies, classics, and environmental history. His first book, Demonic Bodies and the Dark Ecologies of Early Christian Culture (Oxford University Press), explored how early Christian understandings of the "bodies" of demons had major ramifications for early Christian cultures and environments.
His work has also appeared in academic journals such as the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Early Christian Studies, Harvard Theological Review, and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, as well as public venues including Bible Odyssey, Religion for Breakfast, Religion Dispatches, The Bart Ehrman Blog, and the “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” podcast. See more at Media & Publicity, Free Stuff, & Online Courses.
He has received fellowships and prizes from the Society of Biblical Literature, North American Patristics Society, the Louisville Institute, and the National Humanities Center, among others, and has given invited public lectures at the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, and Duke University.
For more on his academic scholarship see his Academia.edu site and Curriculum Vitae.
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