Volker Leppin

Volker Leppin (born 1966) is a German church historian. He is the Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale University.

Leppin grew up as the son of a pastor at St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg, Germany. He studied theology at the University of Marburg, the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem and Heidelberg University. In 1994, he completed his PhD at the University of Heidelberg with a doctoral thesis on William of Ockham. In 1997, he earned his habilitation with a study on Lutheran apocalypticism. Later, he taught at the University of Jena and the University of Tübingen. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, in 2020 and a second honorary doctorate from the United Lutheran Seminary in 2026.