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Nanovic Hall, the state-of-the-art new home to the Departments of Economics, Political Science, and Sociology, their affiliated centers and programs, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, includes laboratory and research spaces, classrooms, and offices, all designed to encourage interaction between faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students. It features a soaring, three-story forum to be used for events, the latest video conferencing technology in each of the departmental suites, and a formal mediation room modeled after the United Nations that has translation capabilities for up to three languages.

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The largest construction project in the 175-year history of the University of Notre Dame – an 800,000-square-foot integration of world-class space for teaching, research, performances, faith, multimedia, student life and athletics – is nearing completion, with several components now open or opening over the next two weeks and most of the other facilities ready for occupancy in January. The buildings include the new homes of the Deparment of Anthropology, Department of Psychology, Department of Music, and Sacred Music at Notre Dame.

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Meghan Sullivan, a University of Notre Dame professor of philosophy, has won a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support a two-week NEH Summer Institute on teaching philosophy as a way of life. The program will gather 25 faculty from across the country who are interested in developing courses that explore the concrete recommendations that various philosophical movements propose for achieving the good life. Sullivan teaches the introductory philosophy course God and the Good Life at Notre Dame.

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Notre Dame seniors John Haley and Julia Szromba see documentaries as a powerful tool — to change policy, to change laws, and to change minds. The two film, television, and theatre (FTT) majors’ recently completed Respectfully, Tony, a short documentary that shines a light on the U.S.’s mass incarceration problem and challenges people to rethink their opinions of the death penalty. The film has now been selected for multiple film festivals across the country.

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Heather Hyde Minor, professor of art history, has been appointed academic director of the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway by Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization. During her two-year term, Hyde Minor will hold full academic oversight of the Gateway, including the Rome undergraduate program and efforts to enhance the University’s research profile in Rome and beyond. Hyde Minor succeeds Theodore J. Cachey Jr., Ravarino Family Professor of Italian and director of the William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies. 

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Darcia Narvaez, professor of psychology in the Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters and a fellow in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, has been named one of two winners of the first Expanded Reason Award for research. The award was given by University Francisco de Vitoria and the Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation to recognize innovation in scientific research and academic programs based on Benedict XVI’s proposal to broaden the horizons of reason. Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. 

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DellaNeva, a professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, will hold full academic oversight of the Gateway during her two-year term, including the London undergraduate program and efforts to enhance the University’s research profile in London and beyond. A faculty member since 1982, DellaNeva also served as chair of her department from 1989-96 and as associate dean for undergraduate studies in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters from 2010-17.

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The Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) at the University of Notre Dame has received multiple funding awards totaling nearly $700,000 this summer to continue its work reducing poverty and improving lives through evidence-based programs and policies. “We are excited about and thankful for the support from these funders,” said James Sullivan, co-founder of LEO and the Rev. Thomas J. McDonagh, C.S.C., Associate Professor of Economics. “This will allow us to continue to create evidence that supports programs doing innovative work to serve the poor.”

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The University of Notre Dame has received $138.1 million in research funding for fiscal year (FY) 2017, surpassing the previous record of $133.7 million set in FY 2015. Approximately 57.8 percent of the research awards came from federal funding, while 26.9 percent came from foundations or other sponsors, and 15.3 percent came from industry.

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As the 200th birthday of American icon Henry David Thoreau is celebrated around the world on July 12, Laura Dassow Walls, author of the comprehensive biography Henry David Thoreau: A Life, will be commemorating the date in Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau’s birthplace. Walls, the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English, is a leading scholar of Thoreau. Thoreau: A Life, the first comprehensive biography of the life of Thoreau since Walter Harding’s The Days of Henry Thoreau was published in 1965, was officially released by the University of Chicago Press Wednesday.

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Can humans truly attain an accurate, objective view of reality? Or is our perspective inescapably colored by who we are and what we’ve experienced? Philosopher Sean Kelsey asserts that this problem is central to Aristotle’s text De Anima — and that Aristotle argued we can, a point his predecessors had tried and failed to make.

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Although working-age adult refugees who enter the United States often initially rely on public assistance programs, a study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame indicates that the long-term economic benefit of admitting refugees outweighs the initial costs. The study, published as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper this week, was conducted by William Evans, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics, and Daniel Fitzgerald, undergraduate research assistant at Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities. 

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Rev. Daniel Groody, C.S.C., associate professor of theology, will address the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the theology of migration during the bishops’ annual Spring General Assembly, June 14-15, in Indianapolis. Groody’s talk, “Passing Over: Migration, Theology and the Eucharist,” draws on his research around the world mapping the many sides of the current conversation on migration.

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The Association for Israel Studies has recognized Alan Dowty, a professor emeritus in Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science, with an AIS-Israel Institute Lifetime Achievement Award for his “lasting and path-breaking contributions” that have significantly shaped the field of Israel studies. Dowty has published seven books and more than 130 articles on the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations. A revised and expanded fourth edition of his acclaimed book Israel/Palestine will be published in October.

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One of the most innovative and new pieces of popular culture emerged in 1914 when Winsor McCay, a famous cartoonist and vaudeville performer, incorporated an animated cartoon called Gertie into his act. Despite its popularity at the time, the original film and the paper drawings for it have all but been forgotten over the past 100 years. But now, faculty members in Notre Dame's Department of Film, Television, and Theatre are working to change that by collaborating internationally to restore the film and to research the history surrounding its cultural impact.

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John Van Engen, the Andrew V. Tackes Professor of Medieval History, received two significant honors from the Medieval Academy of America at its annual meeting in Toronto last month. A member of Notre Dame’s Department of History since 1977, Van Engen received the association’s Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies and was elected president of the Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America, a group formed more than 90 years ago to promote the study of the Middle Ages and recognize scholars around the world who make important contributions to the field.

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Congratulations to the Class of 2017! This video, screened at the Arts and Letters Diploma Ceremony, features several seniors reflecting on their time at Notre Dame and in the College of Arts and Letters. "Coming to Notre Dame has instilled in me a sense of possibility to do great things with those gifts that I've acquired here — knowledge, skills, friends, community — and bringing that to the world," said political science major Olivia Till, who will join Atlantic Media's National Journal as a research fellow. "And I'm excited for that journey."

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A record 30 College of Arts and Letters students and alumni have been awarded grants by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to study abroad in 2017-18. The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, offering students grants to conduct research, study and teach abroad. 

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Craig Iffland, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Theology, has been named a 2017 recipient of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. He is one of only 21 scholars from across the country to receive the award, the nation’s largest and most prestigious for Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences who are addressing questions of ethical and religious values

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized Robert Vargas, assistant professor of sociology, with an Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. Vargas is one of 10 Notre Dame faculty members to receive the award in 2017.

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The Fulbright U.S. Student Program, the National Science Foundation, the Rhodes Trust, and other organizations have awarded scholarships and fellowships to 23 members of the College of Arts and Letters’ Class of 2017.

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Four undergraduate students in Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters received Undergraduate Library Research Awards during the 10th annual Undergraduate Scholars Conference on Friday, May 5. The award honors individuals who conduct original research and demonstrate exemplary skills through their broad use of library resources, collections, and services for their scholarly and creative works.

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An examination of one of the 20th century’s most important Catholic theologians has garnered a significant honor for Jennifer Newsome Martin, an assistant professor in the Program of Liberal Studies. She is one of 10 people worldwide to receive the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, presented by the University of Heidelberg’s Forschungszentrum für Internationale und Interdisziplinäre Theologie for outstanding doctoral or first post-doctoral works in the area of God and spirituality.

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Kristin Valentino’s research on evaluating the effectiveness of a brief relational intervention for maltreated preschool-aged children and their mothers is featured in a special section of Child Development. In order to help children facing maltreatment, researchers and clinicians first needed to address the heart of the problem. The relationship between the parent and child is key, she argues.

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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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Felipe Fernández-Armesto has received Spain's highest honor for contributors to science, scholarship, education, and the arts.

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Agustín Fuentes finds the four predominant arguments that seek to explain human evolution and human nature to be compelling but extremely simplified. Years of research and an emphasis on cross-disciplinary conversations has instead led him to a more complete story of human evolution. Creativity and collaboration, he argues in The Creative Spark, are the most important explanations for why we are the way we are.

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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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Alvin Plantinga, the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, was named the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate on Tuesday (April 25) by the John Templeton Foundation. Over his 50 years of research in philosophy of religion, epistemology and metaphysics, Plantinga has advanced landmark arguments for the existence of God, returning the questions of religious belief to the common discourse of academic philosophy.

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The collaborative global research project, Under Caesar's Sword, is co-directed by political scientist Daniel Philpott. “In Response to Persecution,” a report on the UCS project’s findings, was launched April 20 in a day-long symposium at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

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