Latest News

With Mellon Foundation fellowship, historian to study global economic and cultural impact of coffee

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: Research, Internationalism, General News, Faculty News, and Centers and Institutes

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.

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Dante scholar wins Modern Language Association of America award for book on 14th-century poets

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

David Lummus, assistant director of the Notre Dame Center for Italian Studies and the Devers Family Program in Dante Studies, has won an award from the Modern Language Association of America for his manuscript about the poet’s role as an authority in the political arena in the 14th century. Lummus accepted the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for a Manuscript in Italian Literary Studies at the MLA’s annual convention in Seattle last month for The City of Poetry: Imagining the Civic Role of the Poet in Fourteenth-Century Italy.

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Sociologist receives NSF grant to study change over time in nationally representative samples of U.S. protest events

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

Kraig Beyerlein, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded a $290,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study change over time in characteristics of protests in the United States, such as size, demographic composition, presence of counterdemonstrators, and the use of disruptive tactics.

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Acclaimed theologian and church historian joins Arts and Letters faculty, enhancing strength in post-Reformation Catholicism

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: Research, General News, Faculty News, and Catholicism

Ulrich L. Lehner joined the Notre Dame faculty this fall as the William K. Warren Professor of Theology, following 13 years at Marquette University. The author of 10 books and editor of 17 volumes, Lehner “is widely regarded as the leading scholar of early modern Catholicism,” according to the chair of the Department of Theology.

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Political science professor’s NSF-funded team working to make data from states more accessible and easier to analyze

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: Research, General News, and Faculty News

Notre Dame political scientist Jeff Harden is part of a multidisciplinary research team awarded a $1 million National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator grant to create a hub that will make it easier to access and analyze data from states on public policy and economic and social outcomes. Harden said making comparisons across states is often difficult because data is decentralized and each state uses different methods to collect and record such data. His team will develop a comprehensive data hub that will allow users to easily explore, visualize and analyze the data.

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Professor of medieval literature joins Department of English

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, and Faculty News

Michelle Karnes believes imagination is the key to understanding medieval meditations about the life of Christ. When readers picture themselves holding Jesus as a baby or feeding him, it evokes powerful emotions, she said. “There are good cognitive reasons why imagining yourself participating in Christ’s life helps you engage with the narrative,” she said. “It causes you to invest yourself in a more profound way.” Karnes joins the faculty in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters this fall as an associate professor of English, after eight years at Stanford University.

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Historian of modern European Catholicism joins Arts and Letters faculty

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, and Faculty News

An intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe, Sarah Shortall joins the Department of History this fall as an assistant professor. She recently finished a junior research fellowship at Oxford University, is working on a book tentatively titled Soldiers of God in a Secular World: The Politics of Catholic Theology in Twentieth-Century France. The book examines the impact of Catholic theology on French politics after the separation of church and state in 1905, which she said is different from the separation of church and state in the United States.

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New French professor brings expertise in contemporary literature to Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, and Faculty News

The French phrase extrême contemporain is the perfect description for what Sonja Stojanovic is most passionate about — the study of French literature written in the past decade or so. She waits with great anticipation for her favorite authors to release new books and enjoys talking with those writers because she is “right there as it is happening.” “Sometimes you are the first one to write on an author, which is very exciting,” she said. Stojanovic joins Notre Dame’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures this fall as an assistant professor of French.

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Professor wins prestigious international design award

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, Arts, and Faculty News

Brian Edlefson, a Notre Dame assistant professor of visual communication design, has won a prestigious international award for his design work showing how people can adjust their office furniture to shape their work environments. Edlefson won an iF Design Award for user adjustment information he created for furniture maker Herman Miller. Edelfson’s design was selected by a 58-member jury of the iF International Forum Design in Hannover, Germany, from more than 5,500 entries submitted from 59 countries.

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Notre Dame political science professor wins Carnegie Fellowship to study political implications of secularism

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, and Faculty News

David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame, has been selected as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow for his creative thinking and innovative research on the rise of secularism in the United States and its political implications. Campbell, chair of the Department of Political Science, will use the prestigious grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, announced Wednesday, to study the growing number of people in America who identify as nonreligious and the political force they could become.

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Theology and peace studies professor wins Luce Fellowship for research on sub-Saharan Africa

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, Internationalism, Catholicism, and Faculty News

Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, a Notre Dame associate professor of theology and peace studies, will spend a year studying three predominant forms of violence in sub-Saharan Africa after being named a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology for 2017–2018, one of six scholars selected from members of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Katongole will begin a yearlong study in January aimed at looking at ethnic, religious, and ecological violence in African countries south of the Sahara.

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Arts and Letters associate dean named chair of the International Shakespeare Association

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, Internationalism, Arts, and Faculty News

Peter Holland, the College of Arts and Letters’ associate dean for the arts and the McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies, has been named chair of the International Shakespeare Association. Holland, a professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, was selected by the association’s executive committee from candidates nominated worldwide for the prestigious position. The association, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, the birthplace of Shakespeare, seeks to further the study of the playwright’s life and to connect Shakespeareans and Shakespeare societies around the world.

 

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Sociologist uses technology to track how people connect—and how those connections impact behavior

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, and Faculty News

What draws people to become friends, leads them to form social networks, and what keeps those relationships going? Omar Lizardo, a professor of sociology, is seeking to answer those questions as he researches whether people with similar health habits and even sleep patterns are naturally drawn together — and whether those friendships influence people’s attitudes and health and fitness choices.

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Music history and liturgy professor elected president of Medieval Academy of America

Author: Tom Coyne

Categories: General News, Research, Centers and Institutes, and Faculty News

Margot E. Fassler, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at Notre Dame, will become president of the Medieval Academy of America in April. As head of the largest organization in the United States promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies, Fassler hopes to focus attention on a historical era that she believes can provide better understanding of the political, environmental, and class problems currently facing the globe.

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