The economic effects of the coronavius in the U.S. have brought Americans’ preexisting financial precarity into stark focus. Karen Richman, director of undergraduate studies at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, found in a recent study that many people in the U.S. are relying on informal networks of family and friends to stay afloat.
When coronavirus outbreaks threatened the closure of meatpacking facilities across the nation, Notre Dame historian Joshua Specht experienced a striking sense of déjà vu in the parallels to his research on meat production and consumption in the late 19th century. Specht came to Notre Dame in the fall of 2019 soon after publishing his first book, Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America. Recent events at modern meatpacking facilities have intensified interest in his research,
A recent study by University of Notre Dame economists Kasey Buckles, William Evans, and Ethan Lieber — all affiliated with Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) — found that greater exposure to the opioid crisis increases the chance that a child’s mother or father is absent from the household and increases the likelihood that he or she lives in a household headed by a grandparent.
In new research, Rev. Thomas Blantz, C.S.C., Notre Dame professor emeritus of history, presents the story of America’s premier Catholic university from its inception as a French-founded boys’ school in 1842 to its status as an acclaimed undergraduate and international research institution of the 21st century.
The College of Arts and Letters is launching a new minor in economic and business history that will allow undergraduates from across the University to explore the intersections of history, economics, finance, labor, and capitalism. Housed in the Department of History, the minor offers students the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the political, historical, and economic complexities at play in the age of globalization, said Elisabeth Köll, chair of the department.
Assistant Professor of Economics Michèle Müller-Itten and her co-author, Aniko Öry from Yale University, created a model to investigate what workforce compositions would naturally emerge in a labor market and which would maximize total productivity. Their results show it is often best for optimal efficiency if the minority group is overrepresented in the workforce relative to the majority — a conclusion that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that affirmative action will eventually be obsolete.
Research by David Cortez, assistant professor of political science, found that Latinxs — regardless of their preferred national/ethnic identity, their identification with the immigrant experience or their attitude toward immigrants — choose to work in immigration for their own economic interest.
Dominique Vargas discusses how the body works as a metaphor in contemporary American literature and why it is important to question the global politics and economic institutions that dominate, regulate, and sometimes criminalize the body as commodity, labor, and threat.
Paul Ocobock, a Notre Dame associate professor of history, has received a fellowship from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to study the complex economic and cultural connections between coffee lovers and the men, women, and children who grow the beans in places like Kenya. The New Directions Fellowship will support Ocobock’s research of key forces in the history of international trade for his book Imperial Blend: Kenyan Coffee and Capitalism in the Era of Anglo-American Empire, and to develop new courses on global economic history.
Carrie Sweeney ’03 has spent much of her career learning on the job in fast-paced, high-tech environments. As she has risen through the ranks of companies like Google and Pinterest, Sweeney has drawn on the strong foundation she built as a Program of Liberal Studies major at Notre Dame. “Spending those four precious years on campus doing something that you can’t do any other time — shaping your worldview, your ethos by engaging with great texts — that’s just irreplaceable,” Sweeney said. “You can go learn about balance sheets afterward, whether that’s on the job or by getting an MBA. But there’s never going to be a time in life when you can really grapple with foundational ideas as effectively as you can while you’re at Notre Dame.”
Theodore J. Cachey Jr., a professor of Italian and the Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Family Director of Dante and Italian Studies, has been invited to sit on the scientific committee for the 2021 Dante centenary, organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture. He is the sole representative of Dante studies outside of Italy to participate in the deliberations of the planning committee.
Inspired by Pope Francis's observation that Christians "cannot tolerate or turn a blind eye to racism and exclusion in any form and yet claim to defend the sacredness of every human life," the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture will host a webinar discussion on racism and the culture of life on July 28 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT).
To get a clearer picture of people’s mobility in the U.S. during the lockdown period, William Evans and Christopher Cronin, economics researchers at Notre Dame, gathered and analyzed all U.S. coronavirus-related state and local orders and compared them with geolocation data collected across 40 million cellular devices that have opted-in to location sharing services.
Denis Robichaud, an associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, has been awarded the I Tatti Jean-François Malle Residential Fellowship for his project, Controversies over God and Being in the Italian Renaissance: religion, philosophy, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s De ente et uno. As one of 15 recipients awarded an I Tatti residential fellowship, Robichaud will spend a year researching and writing at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy.
Notre Dame anthropologist Alex Chávez has been named one of 10 Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The award supports junior faculty whose research focuses on contemporary American history, politics, culture, and society, and who are committed to the creation of an inclusive campus community for underrepresented students and scholars.
At Kylemore Abbey in western Ireland, the presence of pure beauty overwhelms. A mere picture will not suffice; you must draw or write or paint. That’s the idea behind two summer programs that Notre Dame runs at the abbey in the Connemara mountains. The debut of a month-long graduate art residency last summer adds another option on top of a three-credit creative writing seminar that began in 2016. The 19 students spent the first week at the Dublin Global Gateway soaking in the city arts and lit scene, then spent the remainder at Kylemore Abbey, a 19th-century castle where Notre Dame has renovated a section for hosting guests.
Marie Lynn Miranda, announced as the successor to Thomas Burish in mid-March, is no stranger to leading a university through a crisis. Now the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at Notre Dame, the former provost of Rice University and a distinguished scholar in the field of children’s environmental health organized the school's disaster response in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. “Throughout our lives, we are confronted with situations where we don’t quite know what to do,” she said. “We don’t know what the best thing is and we don’t necessarily have all the expertise we might ideally have. We must bring data and analysis and the best technical advice there is. But when in doubt, responding with love is always a good choice.”
The University of Notre Dame in partnership with IBM today launched a collaboration that will address the myriad ethical concerns raised by the use of advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning and quantum computing, to address society’s most pressing problems. Funded by a 10-year, $20 million IBM commitment, the new Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab will conduct applied research and promote models for the ethical application of technology within the tech sector, business and government.
Mark McKenna, the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and director of the Law School’s Program on Intellectual Property and Technology Law, has been named the founding director of the University of Notre Dame’s Technology Ethics Center. ND-TEC was formed as a result of interest and leadership from Sarah Mustillo, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Provost Thomas G. Burish.
Buttigieg will work on two research projects at the NDIAS: one that explores how to restore trust in political institutions and another that considers the forces distinctively shaping the 2020s.