Institute collaborates with Dismas House on new Dismas Hub mural
Out of the conviction that a just world is a beautiful world, the institute offers the course Art & Social Change each semester, where Notre Dame undergraduates connect with organizations and communities in the surrounding region to research ways to tell their stories through art. The idea for a mural at the new Dismas Hub emerged out of a long-standing partnership between Dismas House of Indiana and the institute’s carceral engagement staff.
|
|
|
Dr. Tom Catena delivers powerful message on the joy of service at 2025 Bernie Clark Lecture
World-renowned physician Tom Catena visited the University of Notre Dame on Wednesday, November 12, for the 2025 Rev. Bernie Clark, C.S.C., Lecture. Catena sat down with executive director Suzanne Shanahan for a fireside chat in the Eck Center Auditorium, reflecting on how he finds joy in his work at Mother of Mercy Hospital that serves over three million people in the remote Nuba Mountains of war-torn Sudan.
|
|
|
Graduate Institute provides fall break experience for graduate and professional students
A select group of 14 graduate and professional students joined the annual Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research at the Institute for Social Concerns. The Graduate Institute took participants on a three-day, whirlwind tour of several of the institute’s partnering organizations across the region, highlighting ways the students' research can make an impact in local communities.
|
|
|
|
This year has been a time of significant accomplishment here at the Institute—new faculty and postdoctoral fellows, new grants and publications, new courses and exciting lectures. Proximity was not just an implicit theme for much of our work; it was an explicit lens to understand and a methodology for doing our research, teaching, and engagement with communities locally and globally.
|
|
|
OVERHEARD AT THE INSTITUTE
|
|
|
"The people on death row that I visit get one thousand signals a day that they are worth nothing more than disposable human waste and the state can't wait to kill them—because they've been identified completely by an action, by what they have done. And what does the gospel teach us?"
– Sr. Helen Prejean, speaking to CST minors in the Geddes Hall Coffee House about the new graphic edition of Dead Man Walking
|
| |
|
Virtues & Vocations Webinar
|
Karen Swallow Prior is a scholar and author of several books. We will discuss her most recent book, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful, which explores the difference between passion and calling along with how to find meaning in your work.
Monday, Dec. 1, 2025
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.
On Zoom
|
|
Social Concerns Alumni Book Club
|
The alumni book club will discuss Álvaro Enrigue's You Dreamed of Empires, which brings Tenochtitlan to life at its height. Enrigue sets afire the moment of conquest and turns it into a moment of revolution in a novel so electric and so unique that it feels like a dream.
Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2025
7:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
On Zoom
|
|
|
This student-oriented simulation will immerse participants in the lived experience of individuals returning to our community from prison to develop a better understanding of the systemic barriers they face, as well as the resilience it takes to overcome them.
Friday, Jan. 30, 2026
12:30 pm to 3:00 pm
Remick Commons, Visitation Hall
|
|
The 2026 Encounter lectures kick off on Friday, Jan. 30, with a lecture by Christian ethicist Kate Ward, followed by lectures by Meghan Clark on Feb. 6, Traci West on March 26, and Linda Hogan on April 17. Plan to join us for one or all of these lectures!
Friday, Jan. 30, Feb. 6,
March 26, April 17, 2026
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
|
|
|
Junior Parents Weekend Lecture
|
Mark your calendars for our Junior Parents Weekend Lecture by Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie and, most recently, The Unsettled.
Friday, Feb. 20, 2026
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
|
|
The 2026 Poverty Studies Distinguished Lecture will be delivered by Claudia Rowe, journalist and author of Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care.
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium
|
|
|
Social Concerns Spring Courses
|
Notre Dame students: check out all our 1- and 3-credit course offerings for the spring! Many courses include travel over spring break. Check out all our courses and apply today!
|
|
Graduate students are eligible to apply for a $1,000 Justice Lab Grad Student Award! The application for Spring 2026 is open through December 15.
|
|
|
Above: The combined Geddes Hall basement classrooms overflowed with first-year students for the NDBridge information session. Below: Sannah Arvidson-Hicks, a master of global affairs student in the international peace studies major, sports her SOCO swag during the Graduate Institute's site visit to Faith CDC in Gary, Indiana.
|
|
|
As an interdisciplinary academic institute, the Institute for Social Concerns leverages research to respond to the complex demands of justice and to serve the common good. This series, ReSearching for the Common Good, highlights some of the scholars in our community.
|
Brett Foster is a neuroscience and behavior major from New Milford, Connecticut. He spent the summer of 2024 in Lima, Peru, on a Social Concerns Summer Fellowship for which he received a 2024 Research for the Common Good Award from the Institute for Social Concerns. With the award funding, he conducted follow-up research in the summer of 2025. In addition to his involvement with the institute, Brett works with the Special Olympics of Notre Dame and the BRAIN Lab in the Department of Psychology. Brett's research has been generously supported by the Matt Weyenberg Memorial Endowment for Excellence at the Institute for Social Concerns.
What research did you conduct for the Social Concerns Summer Fellowship?
Through my fellowship, I researched the mental health of mothers of children with disabilities in the San Juan de Lurigancho district of Lima, Peru. Through this research project, I learned about the various factors impacting mothers and ultimately determined that having a support system was essential to mothers’ well-being. While this conclusion was important in helping me learn how to properly support families facing disabilities and allowed me to work with community leaders to develop stronger support systems, I noticed that the roots of families’ hardship—their children’s disability—remained unchanged. This deepened my passion for working with children with disabilities.
What follow-up research did you conduct as a recipient of the Research for the Common Good Award?
The Research for the Common Good Award carried funding of up to $5,000 to conduct additional research on a question of the common good. With this funding, I decided to focus my research on addressing the neurological basis of the movement disabilities I encountered in Peru. To do this, I took an unpaid research assistant position at the Burke Neurological Institute, an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medicine, and studied the neural circuits that are implicated in movement. My work consisted of studying the behavior and movement of rodents undergoing optogenetic stimulation of various neural pathways in the brain. With this work, I was able to play a role in identifying the interactions of different brain regions that initiate complex movement. Ultimately, this work can be used to develop therapies for neurological disorders that hinder motion.
How do you see your research contributing to the common good?
My time in Peru was the most impactful two months of my life and helped me discover the direction I want to take my professional career. That experience along with my biomedical research completed last summer are what drives me toward a future as a physician equipped with the skills and knowledge to treat children facing disabilities, providing the support families might not find otherwise. Specifically, out of my research this past summer emerged the collaborative research product Glutamatergic Pedunculopontine Nucleus (PPN) Projections as Mediators of Locomotion, supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Grants. This research product contributes to the common good by helping to identify pathways in the brain and understand their roles in locomotion state and speed, thus contributing to and continuing my mission of treating disabilities by addressing the biological underpinnings of movement disorders.
|
|
|
Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
View this email online.
|
Geddes Hall | Notre Dame, IN 46556 US
|
|
|
This email was sent to david.c.cramer@gmail.com.
To continue receiving our emails, add us to your address book.
|
|
|
|
