Born in Melbourne to parents who migrated to Australia from the island of Crete in Greece, I was nurtured in the Orthodox Christian tradition and received the name “Nektarios Nikolaos Trakakis” upon baptism.

In my final years of secondary school I discovered the riches of philosophy, initially through the novels of Nikos Kazantzakis, which then led me to read Nietzsche, Bergson, Heidegger, Plato and many others.

I went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts degree (majoring in philosophy and modern Greek) at the University of New England, while concurrently undertaking a Bachelor of Theology degree (majoring in Church History and Systematic Theology) at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College (a member institute of the Sydney College of Divinity). I then completed my Honours year at the University of Melbourne with a thesis (supervised by Bruce Langtry) on the Reformed Epistemology of Alvin Plantinga. Subsequently I wrote my PhD thesis (under Graham Oppy at Monash University) on the notorious problem of evil, a work which was to form the basis of my first book, The God Beyond Belief.

I continued at Monash at postdoctoral level, working on various issues in the philosophy of religion as well as on a large project on philosophy in Australasia. During this time I was awarded a research fellowship at the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, a stay which was to bear fruit through my second book: The End of Philosophy of Religion.

Over 2009-2010 I continued at Monash while also taking up a position at Deakin University, teaching there a large class on World Religions. At the beginning of 2011 I moved to the Australian Catholic University, where I am part of an exciting team of philosophers of religion seeking to boldly push the discipline in new directions.

At the Melbourne launch of "Southern Sun, Aegean Light"