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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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The James R. Squire Office of Policy Research in the English Language Arts will open this fall at Notre Dame under the direction of the University’s Center for Literacy Education.

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Liang Cai, assistant professor of history, and Meng Jiang, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, collaborated on an international research project titled “Digital Empires: Structured Biographical and Social Network Analysis of Early Chinese Empires.” As part of the project, Cai hosted a roundtable discussion on June 24 at Notre Dame’s Beijing Global Gateway. 

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Maria McKenna and Richard Pierce have been appointed co-directors of the AnBryce Scholars Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, a scholar leaders program supporting first-generation college students who demonstrate great promise in the face of challenging life circumstances.

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For Rebecca McKenna, the piano’s history is about much more than just manufacturing or marketing — it’s about issues of race, class, and gender at the turn of the 20th century. It’s about transnational trade and the debut of a new genre of music. McKenna, an assistant professor in the Department of History, is exploring all of these issues for her new book project, with support from a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship.

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Stepan Family Associate Professor of Economics Rüdiger Bachmann at the University of Notre Dame and his co-authors studied the scandal and found that the fallout from Volkswagen’s wrongdoing cost other German car makers billions of dollars in sales.

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Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have received $180.6 million in research funding for fiscal year 2019 — $100 million more than 10 years ago and a more than 27 percent increase from last year.

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Chloe Gibbs is an assistant professor of economics and faculty affiliate of Notre Dame's Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. Her research interests include applied microeconomics, the economics of education, and labor economics. In this video, she discusses why a move to widespread full-day kindergartenten has actually widened achievement gaps among children, and why it's important to study why programs don't work the way they're intended, in order to inform policymakers and school leaders about what they should be doing.

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Jaime Ros, a Mexican economist and longtime faculty member in the Department of Economics and fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, has died at age 69.

Ros was considered a pillar at Kellogg, where he was a faculty fellow from 1990 to 2010. He specialized in development economics, trade, and macroeconomic policies and problems in developing countries, and, according to El Economista…

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