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Tim Morton joined the College of Arts and Letters faculty last spring as director of the collaborative innovation minor and associate professor of the practice in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. The minor, which centers on the principles of design thinking as an approach to solving real-world problems, draws students with a wide variety of majors from across the University — with more than 65 students taking the introductory Design Matters course last semester alone.

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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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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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Alison Rice, an associate professor of French and Francophone studies, conducted 18 filmed interviews in Paris over eight years with authors originally from Iran, Korea, Senegal, and Bulgaria, among other countries. She compiled, edited, and translated the interviews to create an online archive, accessible to scholars and students worldwide, and is now completing a book project based on the interviews.

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Notre Dame psychologist Kristin Valentino believes that helping kids identify and express their emotions with their mothers helps children to develop emotion regulation and to improve the parent-child relationship. Arts and Letters Dean Sarah Mustillo's research seeks to improve the way adverse childhood experiences predict adverse health issues in adulthood. If Valentino’s project concerns the care of a few hundred trees, Mustillo's study is the 30,000-foot view of the forest. 

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Nicole Woods, assistant professor of art history at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a 2019 recipient of an Arts Writers Grant. This award is among the highest honors an art historian or critic can receive, and Woods is one of 19 recipients from a candidate pool of more than 800. Woods is an expert in Euro-American neo-avant-gardes, performance and conceptual art, intersectional feminism and taste cultures. Her current research includes a consideration of the widespread use of food as an object of consumption and a form of political critique in the work of several late-20th-century artists.

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In Catherine Bolten’s recently published book, Serious Youth in Sierra Leone, she presents findings on generational preconceptions and their impact on young men in Makeni, Sierra Leone. Her research has implications for everything from development to post-conflict reconstruction to how millennials are perceived and engaged around the world.

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Over the summer, Notre Dame theology students joined professional archaeologists to look for clues buried in the ancient soil of the Holy Land. What the students found could make valuable contributions to our understanding of life at the border of biblical Judah and Philistia, as well as the history of the land purchased in the 1960s for what became the University's campus here.

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Katie Bugyis, who received a bachelor's degree in history and a Ph.D. in medieval studies from Notre Dame, recently joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, concurrent assistant professor in the Department of Theology, and faculty fellow of the Medieval Institute. In this Q&A, she discusses her return to Notre Dame, how she became interested in medieval studies, and why the Program of Liberal Studies is the best home for her teaching and research.

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Jason Ruiz, an associate professor in the Department of American Studies, has won the 2019 Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor in the College of Arts and Letters. Created in 1970, the Sheedy Award honors Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., who served as dean of Arts and Letters from 1951 to 1969. Ruiz will accept the award at a reception in his honor on December 3. “It means the world to me to be recognized in this way, he said, “especially because the College is full of great teachers I admire.”

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Much medieval Italian art from the 13th century is focused on Christianity — paintings and sculptures depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary, saints, or other Biblical scenes. But murals that were hidden for hundreds of years under layers of whitewash at the Santi Quattro Coronati monastery in Rome are different — in addition to religious iconography, they also depict secular knowledge. Notre Dame art historian Marius Hauknes is fascinated by the significant shift implied by the newly discovered paintings, and he’s spending this year writing a book on the subject after winning a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Notre Dame economist Taryn Dinkelman studies labor markets and human capital in developing countries, primarily in her native South Africa as well as Malawi and Chile. One current project uses South African household survey data to track the effects of newly-gained access to electricity. Dinkelman thinks that a key constraint for households is the capital to acquire large appliances that use the electricity.

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A major sociology conference at the University of Notre Dame recently brought together scholars and practitioners for a rare chance to talk about their work and research on a range of development-related topics. “We don’t get this opportunity very often. This is one of the only academic conferences where we can have that dialogue with practitioners,” said sociologist Tamara Kay, one of three faculty members in the Department of Sociology who organized the American Sociological Association’s 8th Annual Sociology of Development Conference, held Oct. 17-19.

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Laura Miller-Graff is a Notre Dame assistant professor of psychology and peace studies and core faculty at the William J. Shaw Center for Children and Families. Her research interests include the developmental effects of exposure to violence in childhood, resiliency in children, and interventions for violence-exposed persons. In this video, she discusses how her research helps children and families thrive, even in the wake of considerable hardship.

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Michael “Mic” Detlefsen, the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, died Monday (Oct. 21). He was 70.

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Agustín Fuentes is the Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research interests include the roles of creativity and imagination in human evolution, multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the structures of race and racism. In this video, he discusses why he studies the human brain in order to understand our past and imagine our future.

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Student engagement has long been recognized as key to academic success. Most research, however, has focused on engagement generally, across the school setting. Quantitative psychologist Ying “Alison” Cheng is working to better understand the link between student engagement and learning outcomes in a specific course — and how adaptive testing can help.

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After Kaleem Minor graduates with a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the College of Arts and Letters this spring, he’ll head to California for a job he’d never dreamed of.  In fact, less than a year ago, the soon-to-be analyst for a $35 billion alternative investment firm knew next to nothing about the world of finance. A trip over spring break last year changed his perspective — and his career path. Minor was one of 16 black Notre Dame students who participated in an “alternative investment trek” to the West Coast to learn more about careers in the financial services industry. 

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Being in the right place at the right time can change everything. For Nina Glibetić, witnessing a chance discovery changed her research focus — and the trajectory of her career. While at St. Catherine's Monastery on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a librarian discovered a folio of parchment that didn't look like others in the collection. She immediately recognized the rare language that was on it, and has since been working to translate and interpret the 11th-century folio — which is one of, if not the, oldest Glagolitic texts in existence.

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A special event was hosted on Friday, September 20, at Innovation Park to recognize the growing relationship between the University of Notre Dame and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. The day started with the first Notre Dame/Leuven international collaborative workshop in ancient, medieval, and renaissance philosophy. Following the workshop, a reception celebrated the successful efforts of Gretchen Reydams-Schils, a professor in the Program of Liberal Studies, who helped develop Notre Dame International’s first formal faculty exchange agreement.

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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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Mike Schur — creator of The Good Place and Parks and Recreation and a writer and producer on The Office — came to Notre Dame last week to talk to students in the 1-credit The Good Class, which focuses on the philosophy and production of his current NBC show, as well as multiple sections of the God and the Good Life introductory philosophy course.

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The University of Notre Dame plans to add 15 new faculty positions in its recently established Technology Ethics Center, which aims to address the increasingly complex and continuously evolving ethical and policy questions related to the impact of technology on society and individuals. “Through the work of this new center, Notre Dame has an opportunity to play an important role in ensuring ethical questions are carefully considered throughout the entire innovation and technology development process,” said Sarah Mustillo, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, who has spearheaded the initiative.

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“If we want democracy to survive into the next century, then we really need to understand the conditions for that process,” said Aníbal Pérez Liñán, professor of political science and global affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Liñán studies the role of political institutions in the process of democratization, particularly in Latin America. His research finds that political leaders or parties are central to the success of a democracy, as opposed to the economic or structural conditions of a country. 

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You’ve heard of in vitro (the study of things in test tubes) and in vivo (the study of things in a living system). Now meet in fimo, a new scientific term coined by a Notre Dame classicist and researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine to mean “excrement examined experimentally.” Their proposal — largely written by Luca Grillo, chair and associate professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Classics — was published this year in the journal Gastroenterology.

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Thousands of years ago, Mesopotamians craned their necks to watch as the moon passed between them and the sun, casting darkness on the Earth. They sacrificed animals and opened them up, carefully analyzing the characteristics of their organs. These ancient people were looking for messages from the gods; they sought information about potential enemy attacks, the weather, and predictions for their crops. “In any society, there is a desire to know the future. That’s still true today, if you think about political polling or weather forecasting,” said Abraham Winitzer, the Jordan H. Kapson Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Notre Dame. Winitzer, who works primarily in Assyriology, is one of two Notre Dame theology faculty that have a focus on Jewish studies, an area in which the department is giving new emphasis.

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Laura Miller-Graff, an assistant professor of psychology and peace studies, along with co-principal investigator Kathryn Howell of the University of Memphis and a team of Notre Dame faculty members, will evaluate the intervention program through a randomized, controlled trial involving more than 200 women and their infants.

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Research led by William Evans, co-founder of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) at the University of Notre Dame, confirms that for every HUD-VASH voucher distributed, one fewer veteran is living on the streets.

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Luis Fraga, director of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, has been selected as the 2019 Norton Long Career Achievement Award winner for his work in political science by a committee of distinguished peers. The award is given each year to a scholar who has made important contributions to the study of urban politics over the course of a career. 

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Therese Cory is one of 50 total members and one of two women — the third in the academy’s history — to be so honored.

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