Dr Tombs will also become director of the university's associated Centre for Theology and Public Issues in January.
He succeeds former director Prof Andrew Bradstock, who left the Otago centre to take up an appointment, in September last year, as secretary for church and society at the United Reformed Church in Britain.
Dr Tombs is assistant professor of conflict resolution and reconciliation at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin, undertaking that work in Belfast as director of Trinity's Centre for Post-Conflict Justice.
His primary focus was on religion, violence and conflict transformation.
Otago vice-chancellor Prof Harlene Hayne said Dr Tombs had ''an impressive record'' as a researcher, teacher and academic leader in public theology.
His wide networks and experience in running an interdisciplinary research centre would help him establish ''new collaborations at university, national and international levels'', Prof Hayne said.
Dr Tombs has written and edited books including works on theology and social justice in Latin America, and edited the collection ''Rights and Righteousness: Religious Pluralism and Human Rights''.
Originally from England, he has academic qualifications including a BA in theology and philosophy from Oxford University and a doctorate in theology from the University of London.
Before joining Trinity College Dublin in 2001, he lectured for 10 years in theology and religious studies at the University of Roehampton London.
He won Trinity's Provost's Teaching Excellence Award in 2007.
Dr Tombs said the Otago centre had ''pioneered a new approach to theology'' that was relevant to a 21st-century society. It was hard to imagine ''a more stimulating or significant way to work at the interface of faith, values, and public issues''.
He hoped to build on the centre's ''outstanding initial years'' and confirm its role as a ''vibrant national and international centre of excellence in public theology'' he said.
A major gift by the Paterson Charitable Trust resulted in the professorship and centre being established in 2007.
Howard Paterson was a successful Otago businessman and an Otago graduate who had a lifelong interest in the phenomenology of religion.
He died unexpectedly in 2003.
