Ioan Petru Culianu or Couliano (5 January 1950 – 21 May 1991) was a Romanian historian of religion, culture, and ideas, a philosopher and political essayist, and a short story writer.

He graduated in November 1975 from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan[1][6] with a doctorate in the history of religion; his thesis, Gnosticismo e pensiero contemporaneo: Hans Jonas, was written under the direction of Ugo Bianchi [it].

Culianu had divorced his first wife, and at the time of his death was engaged to Hillary Wiesner, a 27-year-old graduate student at Harvard University.

[7] On Tuesday, May 21, 1991, at noon, just minutes after concluding a conversation with his doctoral student, Alexander Argüelles, on a day when the building was teeming with visitors to a book sale, Culianu was murdered in the bathroom of Swift Hall, of the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Before being killed, he had published a number of articles and interviews that heavily criticized the Ion Iliescu post-Revolution regime, making Culianu one of the government's most vocal adversaries.

[1] Ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist involvement, as part of an Iron Guard revival in connection with the nationalist discourse of the late years of Ceauşescu's rule and the rise of the Vatra Românească and România Mare parties, was not itself excluded from the scenario;[8] according to Vladimir Tismăneanu: "[Culianu] gave the most devastating indictment of the new union of far left and far right in Romania".