Notre Dame anthropologist Luis Felipe R. Murillo is helping launch a collaborative project focused on climate change issues with funding from the National Science Foundation that aims to promote the principles of open science. The NSF is investing $12.5 million in 10 projects to “foster catalytic improvements in scientific communities,” including two that will be led by University faculty.
Notre Dame alumna Tess Gunty ’15 has won the National Book Award for fiction for her debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch. Born and raised in South Bend, Gunty majored in English with a concentration in creative writing. “My writing professors from Notre Dame uprooted my literary preconceptions and planted far better ideas in their place,” Gunty writes in the book’s acknowledgments. “I cherished their generosity as an undergraduate, and I continue to cherish it now.”
When the College of Arts & Letters launched a new major that allows students to pair computer science with another liberal arts discipline, Grace Conners was one of the first to apply. Now a senior, she has taken extensive computer science coursework in engineering while also having room in her schedule to pursue a supplementary major in peace studies. Along the way, she’s had four internships that have helped her consider what her future career will look like — one that, ideally, involves using computer science as a tool for peacebuilding.
Notre Dame theology and psychology professors are using science and technology to understand how people respond to sacred art. Robin Jensen, James Brockmole, and G.A. Radvansky received a nearly $1 million grant award from the Templeton Religion Trust for five related research studies that assess sacred art’s impact on viewers’ individual experiences, memories, and spiritual understanding. The grant will help the research team expand upon research done thanks to a previous award from Templeton. In 2020, the interdisciplinary trio began exploring ways in which looking at sacred art informed and enhanced spiritual growth and whether that changed based on time and place.
A new Italian language course led is empowering Notre Dame students to educate students of their own — African refugees who must learn basic Italian before they can relocate to Italy. Through leading online class sessions, five undergraduates from a range of majors and one graduate student sharpened their Italian skills, learned how to teach others, and developed global awareness and empathy for the refugee experience.
The University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Letters hosted the semi-annual conference, “Midwest Economic Theory and International Economics Meetings.” About 100 attendees participated in the three-day event last month, which featured parallel sessions in economic theory and international economics.
As political scientists, Rachel Porter and Erin Rossiter know the importance of being fluent in several languages. Porter understands R, Stata, and Python, while Rossiter is adept in R, C++, SQL, and Java. Their tech skills make the assistant professors of political science two of the top young quantitative data scientists in political science today, greatly improving and expanding the research opportunities and course offerings for graduate and undergraduate students.
Mary Katherine Tillman, a professor emerita in the Program of Liberal Studies, died at Wellbrooke Senior Care Residence on Oct. 21, of complications associated with esophageal cancer. She was 81. Tillman was a scholar of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, writing a book and several extended commentaries on the works of the19th-century English priest, as well as the history and philosophy of liberal education.
A new graduate minor in visual and material culture has been created for Notre Dame students interested in gaining foundational knowledge in global art and architecture history and conducting image-centered interdisciplinary research. The minor was added to enrich the experience of Arts and Letters students in Master of Arts, Master of Fine Arts, and Ph.D. programs through Department of Art, Art History & Design (AAHD) courses in ancient, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary art.
John P. Meier, University of Notre Dame professor, Catholic priest, and renowned biblical scholar, died Oct. 18, at age 80.
Meier, the William K. Warren Professor of Theology emeritus, published nearly 80 articles and 18 books during his distinguished career, including the acclaimed A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus series.
At Notre Dame, students in a course called the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act Clinic have drafted dossiers to the U.S. government to request sanctions against the perpetrators of those crimes. Led by faculty member Thomas Kellenberg, the practicum course is framed around a federal law that allows nongovernmental organizations to request U.S. sanctions against foreign persons who have committed serious human rights abuses or corruption.
The latest video in the "What Would You Fight For?" series show how students who have taken the course gain valuable experience that prepares them for careers in human rights or anti-corruption. Their investigations have caught the eye of the U.S. State and Treasury Departments and have made a real impact in the effort to fight international corruption.
Hate crimes, discrimination, and harassment against Asian Americans in the United States have risen rapidly in recent years, and Notre Dame psychologist Lijuan (Peggy) Wang wants to know how that has impacted adolescents’ mental health and what factors can be leveraged to protect and promote their mental health. To lay the groundwork for building evidence-based and urgently needed interventions, Wang is part of a research team developing the first longitudinal study to fill research gaps and learn about how racial discrimination affects adolescent Asian Americans’ mental health.
Kenneth M. Sayre, a University of Notre Dame professor emeritus of philosophy and an early leader in the study of artificial intelligence, has died at age 94. A member of the faculty for 56 years, he was known for his teaching and research across a broad range of areas, including cybernetics, information theory, philosophy of mind, environmental philosophy, Plato, and epistemology. He authored 14 books, edited or co-edited five more, and published more than 50 articles in scholarly journals.
Stories of founder Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., are legend at the University of Notre Dame. But now, thanks to a trove of never-before-translated letters and a class taught by French professor Rev. Gregory Haake, C.S.C., students are getting the chance to learn more about the young priest defined by his unshakeable faith and determination — through his own words — and to share what they are uncovering with the world. The correspondence spans nearly 50 years and paints a vivid picture of life in the mid-19th century amid the challenges of building a university.
Lilly Endowment Inc. has made a $7.9 million grant to the University of Notre Dame, which will partner with Boston College in leading Haciendo Caminos. The collaborative initiative will bring together 16 other Catholic institutions to form at least 100 of the next generation of Hispanic Catholic pastoral leaders in the United States. Haciendo Caminos’ goals are to reduce barriers and increase support for graduate theological education for U.S.-born Hispanic Catholics; increase knowledge of, and interest in, ministerial professions among this population; and create a consortium of Catholic higher education institutions forming pastoral leaders at the graduate level in collaboration with local ecclesial organizations.
Maps don’t just show us where things are located — for urban planner Asha Barnes ’18, they also reveal stories about who we are and how we live our lives. Majoring in anthropology and Africana studies at Notre Dame allowed Barnes to explore humanity and identity using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. She’s now employed these research techniques in her career, continuing to give back by telling the stories of those who have been silenced. “It was through my education that I was able to put to words my own experience as an Afro-American woman living in this country,” said Barnes, now an associate planner at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “It was through my education at Notre Dame that I was able to learn the skills that I have now to collect and tell the stories of other people and advocate for communities that I’ve worked with.”
Notre Dame psychologists Theodore Beauchaine and Kristin Valentino have received the Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health to research two promising new interventions to reduce the risk of suicide among vulnerable youth. Part of the NIH High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, the award supports individuals or teams proposing transformative projects that are inherently untested but have the potential to create major scientific breakthroughs by challenging existing paradigms.
Congresswoman Liz Cheney will visit the University of Notre Dame on Oct. 14 (Friday) to deliver a lecture titled Saving Democracy by Revering the Constitution. “The center strives to bring a diverse array of speakers to Notre Dame, including our nation’s most consequential political leaders,” said Vincent Phillip Muñoz, director of the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government and the Tocqueville Associate Professor of Political Science. “We are honored to host a leader with a distinguished record of public service and hope that Congresswoman Cheney’s visit will encourage thoughtful conversation about the future of American republicanism and the kind of political character necessary to sustain it.”
A new prison education initiative will bring five local, state and national prison education programs together in one effort to be housed at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns. Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prisons (NDPEP) will offer opportunities for liberal arts education to people incarcerated in Indiana, create the infrastructure to support NDPEP participants as they re-enter their home communities, and provide faculty and student opportunities for education and research on issues related to incarceration.
As a child, Emmanuel Katongole went into the forest near his home in Uganda to draw water from the spring and collect firewood for cooking. Now a diocesan priest who has taught theology and peace studies for a decade at Notre Dame, he has worried upon every return home about the intense deforestation destroying his native land. In a country where more than half the population is under age 20, he knew that young people moving to the cities lacked opportunities and needed firewood, leading to rampant tree cutting.
But it wasn’t until reading Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’ that Katongole envisioned a solution that uses education to address both problems — protecting the environment and providing economic opportunities. He joined with several colleagues and the local Catholic Church to found Bethany Land Institute (BLI) in a rural area 25 miles north of the capital city of Kampala.
Intellectual humility — being free to think and listen without being concerned with the need to “be right” — could be an antidote for some pressing personal and societal problems. An interdisciplinary group of philosophers and psychologists, led by Laura Callahan and supported by a John Templeton Foundation grant, are hoping to identify how the characteristic can be used by individuals to improve their lives and how it can be more inclusive.
In his newest book, historian and Notre Dame Provost John McGreevy examines the Church’s complex role in modern history as it both shaped and followed the politics of nation-states. Through a series of compelling vignettes and detailed analyses, McGreevy traces the events and trends that gave rise to the modern-day Catholic Church, one marked by an unwavering concern for social justice, unprecedented vibrancy in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia and increasing global connections — and one that has significantly expanded the organizational and symbolic reach of the papacy.
Even the most effective poverty alleviation programs in low-income countries can leave some people behind. Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies have a big idea on how to bridge that gap. The new Building Inclusive Growth (BIG) Lab, led by Notre Dame economists Taryn Dinkelman, Lakshmi Iyer, and Joseph Kaboski, will bring some of the world’s best researchers together to develop innovative, long-lasting solutions to help vulnerable populations in developing countries.
Notre Dame historian Sarah Shortall’s debut book, Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics, which chronicles an influential French theological movement that reimagined the Church’s role in the public sphere, has now earned four awards in the 10 months since it was published. The assistant professor of history has received the Giuseppe Alberigo Junior Scholar Award from the European Academy of Religion, the Best Book Award from the College Theology Society, the Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies from New York University, and the first place Book Award for History from the Catholic Media Association.
A renowned group of 12 poets and scholars from across the country will convene at the University of Notre Dame from Sept. 27–28 for a dynamic cultural event featuring talks, conversations, and performances that will showcase the vitality and diversity of contemporary poetry.
As an undergraduate at Notre Dame in the 1970s, Ann Combs was often the only woman in her classes. But that didn't faze her — in fact, it prepared her for a successful 40-year career in public policy affecting retirement and health care benefits. Combs served in the Department of Labor under three presidents, culminating in being appointed assistant secretary for employee benefits security by President George W Bush. She also worked in the private sector, helping trade associations and private companies navigate Washington, D.C. Throughout it all, the skills she developed and knowledge she gleaned from her Notre Dame liberal arts education served her well in her career.
Emilia Justyna Powell, a Notre Dame professor of political science and concurrent professor at The Law School, has won two International Studies Association (ISA) awards for her 2020 book, Islamic Law and International Law: Peaceful Resolution of Disputes. Lauded for its originality, significance, and rigor in international law and religion and international relations, the book covers differences and similarities between the Islamic legal tradition and international law.
Ulrich L. Lehner, a leading expert on early modern Catholicism and the William K. Warren Foundation Professor in the Department of Theology, has been elected a member of Academia Europaea, also called the Academy of Europe. He’s in excellent company — 75 Nobel Prize recipients are among its members, including the three 2021 laureates in physics. The academy promotes research, advises governments and international organizations, and furthers interdisciplinary and international research.
What is the classics major like at Notre Dame? “If you like history or poetry or art history or literature, you can find your own path in classics. I wouldn't want to have been anywhere else,” said student Nicholas Mungan. Classics majors pursue their passions while developing skills such as critical thinking, analysis, writing, and problem solving, then go on to top graduate and professional schools and work in a variety of professions and industries.
For generations, North Americans have seen media images of poverty, disease, civil war, and crime in Central America, including photographs and videos of Central Americans fleeing violence and of children, some just 2 or 3 years old, kept in cages at immigration detention camps. Even when well-intentioned, the images can feed into negative stereotypes, said Tatiana Reinoza, an assistant professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. Reinoza has won a competitive Getty Scholar Grant that will support her effort to more fully represent the seven-country region, its people, and their stories with her book project, tentatively titled “Retorno: Art and Kinship in the making of a Central American Diaspora.”