💗 How sweet it is to share the love with you! Join us tomorrow, Friday, February 13, to kick off Saint Valentine’s Day elementary school style—with lots of sugar, stickers, and friends! We’ll have special holiday cookies at Geddes Hall all day. Hope to see you there! 💗

STORIES

Investing in the common good

“Virtuous business is driven by love.” These words from Lukas Jesso ’26 capture the McNeill Winter Plunge, a course designed by the institute to broaden moral imagination through an immersive experience in Boston during winter break. The program demonstrated that leadership is a labor of love—a commitment to using professional excellence as a platform to serve the dignity of every human person. 

A vocation of healing justice

From the violent cane deliverance rituals of Southeastern Nigeria to the tattoo removal clinics of Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles, 2022–23 Graduate Justice Fellow Fr. Joachim Ozonze is discovering how inscriptions of violence on the human body can be rewritten through the radical power of kinship and Ifunaya—a love that truly sees the other.

Walking the walk of reentry

During Walk the Walk Week, the institute offered the Notre Dame community a unique opportunity to step into the hidden, often dehumanizing maze of life after incarceration. Through a community-led reentry simulation, students confronted the daunting hurdles faced by returning citizens, fostered a deeper awareness, and imagined opportunities for loving accompaniment. 

ON OUR SHELF

The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

From the best-selling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, The Unsettled is a searing multi-generational novel—set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama—about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival. Read the novel and then join us to hear Mathis give the Junior Parents Weekend lecture!

EVENTS

Labor Café: The Affordability Crisis

Everyone is talking about the “affordability crisis,” from politicians, pundits, and policy advocates to anti-poverty groups, labor activists, workers, and consumers. We’ll dig in to the facts and the arguments animating the debates on the best paths forward for the American economy.

Friday, February 13
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
McNeill Gallery, Geddes Hall

JPW Lecture: Ayana Mathis

Join us for our Junior Parents Weekend Lecture, “Imprinted by Belief: Faith, Religion, and American Literature,” with Ayana Mathis, bestselling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie and, most recently, The Unsettled. Reception and book signing to follow. 

Friday, February 20
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium

V&V Webinar: Michael Norton

Michael Norton is a behavioral scientist, professor and author of The Ritual Effect: Unlocking the Extraordinary Power of the Ordinary. Join us for a conversation on habit, ritual, and well-being.

Monday, February 23
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
On Zoom

Encounter Lecture Series: Traci C. West

For the third speaker of our 2026 Encounter series, Rev. Dr. Traci C. West will offer a lecture “Tested Loyalties: Christianity, Racism, and Gender Abuse.” Light reception to follow. Join us!

Friday, March 27
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium

Poverty Studies Distinguished Lecture

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. Rowe is the recipient of a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and multiple honors for investigative reporting. Her work has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Join us for this opportunity to hear her reflect on her 34 years of writing about the places where youth and government policy clash.

Tuesday, April 21
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Geddes Hall, Andrews Auditorium

OPPORTUNITIES

McNeill Common Good Fellows

McNeill Common Good Fellows are a community of students from across all Notre Dame colleges and schools committed to exploring life’s biggest questions through shared coursework, community engagement, faculty-mentored research, and adventure. First year students can apply for this paid, three-year fellowship. Apply by Sunday, February 15.

Postbaccalaureate Fellowship

The institute is looking for 2025 or 2026 Notre Dame graduates who are enthusiastic about working with the institute to advance programming and who have demonstrated the intent to continue to study and work in a related field. At least one position will focus on the area of mass incarceration. Apply by Sunday, March 15.

GENESIS EVENTS

Stories of Courage

The 2025–26 Genesis cohort is seeking applications for Stories of Courage, an event held in Andrews Auditorium in Geddes Hall on April 14. Students are encouraged to apply to tell a story by February 27.

The Art of Justice

The 2025–26 Genesis cohort is seeking submissions for The Art of Justice, an exhibition on April 9 in the McNeill Gallery of Geddes Hall. Interested students are encouraged to submit an artistic work by March 23.

COMMUNITY OF SCHOLARS

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.

Giulia Gliozzi is a Ph.D. student in Italian studies in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, a 2025–26 Graduate Justice Fellow at the Institute for Social Concerns, and a doctoral student affiliate at the Kellogg Institute. 

What is the focus of your current research?

Within Italian literature, I focus specifically on Holocaust testimonies—a field that is usually dominated by survivor and chemist Primo Levi. It often feels as though Italian women didn’t experience the concentration camps or have anything to say. Sadly, this kind of erasure of women’s voices is relatable to societies beyond post–World War II Italy. It is a nearly universal experience.

To address this erasure, my research focuses on the early editorial reception of female Holocaust memoirs in Italy between 1945 and 1955. This is the decade before the Eichmann trial, which eventually sparked a boom in testimonies. I am trying to understand why some voices were neglected while others were promoted to the public during that short window. Ultimately, my goal is to reopen the Italian literary canon to integrate more female voices not simply to be more inclusive but in order to bring to life erased stories and uncover what might have been hidden. I focus on the reception of these books—not just who was listened to but also why others were not.

How did you get interested in this topic?

Though I began my career as a medievalist working with manuscripts, I felt a pull toward Holocaust history, an interest sparked first by visiting Auschwitz at the age of twelve. While that was a young age to be exposed to such a story, I have never forgotten it. My interest was further kindled by taking classes with my advisor, Charles Leavitt. During a period of discernment at Notre Dame, I realized that I wanted to develop that interest into a research project that motivates me and gives me a sense of purpose as a scholar responsible to future generations. This project allows me to merge my passion for archival research with modern questions of identity and history.

How do you view your research as contributing to the common good?

My research shows that if female survivors’ accounts mentioned being arrested by an Italian officer or being betrayed by an Italian neighbor, those accounts often disappeared or were published by tiny houses and never reached a broad public. Accounts that focused strictly on the experience within the camps—the in media res of the Holocaust—tended to have better fortune, though even these got lost in the Italian Holocaust literary canon over time.

My research advances the common good by restoring ownership to these survivors whose voices were mitigated by editors and historical narratives. In an era of rising nationalism, it is vital to challenge comfortable myths. By teaching students to look beyond the official version of history and engage with marginalized perspectives, I hope to foster a more critical, empathetic society that recognizes our shared humanity and resists repeating past injustices.

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