People
Theology is a large and distinguished department at Notre Dame, with scholars known and respected around the world for their groundbreaking work in such areas as liberation theology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Furthermore, teaching has always been one of the department’s strengths. Ph.D. students, together with their faculty mentors, engage in comprehensive teaching workshops to prepare them to teach in a variety of institutional settings.
Undergraduate students work with faculty to explore a wide range of subjects, and master-level students prepare to integrate theological understanding into academic, ministerial, and/or other professional contexts.
Faculty
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Khaled Anatolios
Department Chair
John A. O'Brien Professor of TheologyHistory of Christianity, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Early Christian Doctrine, Theological Method, and Biblical Exegesis |Khaled Anatolios is interested in all aspects of the theology of the early Church, with special emphases on the Trinitarian, Christological, and soteriological doctrines of the Greek fathers and Augustine; early Christian biblical exegesis; and the development of theological methodology in Patristic and medieval theology. He has published on a variety of early Christian theologians including Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, and Gregory of Nyssa. A particular focus of his work is the engagement between early Christian theological reflection and contemporary theological concerns.
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Gary A. Anderson
Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Thought
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | The Tabernacle narrative | Gary Anderson is interested in all dimensions of Biblical studies. His specialization is in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but because of his interest in the history of interpretation, he also works in Second Temple Judaism and early Christian sources.
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J. Matthew Ashley
Professor
Systematic Theology |Ignatian spirituality and discernment of spirits; ecotheology and ecospirituality. |Matthew Ashley is Professor of Systematic Theology. He came to Notre Dame in 1993 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1993 and an M.T.S. from the (then) Weston Jesuit School of Theology, in Cambridge, Mass. Besides his teaching and research, he has served as a graduate program director for ten years (including seven years as Ph.D. program director) and department chair for seven years. He has written on the political theology of Johann Baptist Metz, and translated and edited four books of Metz’s work. He has also written on Latin American liberation theology, focusing in particular on El Salvador, with articles and book chapters on Saint Óscar Romero, Jon Sobrino, and Ignacio Ellacuría. Two other interests have come to the fore in the last two decades: the relationship between science and religion, and the history of Christian spirituality, Ignatian spirituality in particular. His most recent book, Renewing Theology (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022), considers how an understanding of Ignatian spirituality influenced the writings and work of three Jesuits: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis. His love of nature, especially of the mountains of Colorado where he grew up, has led him to respond to Pope Francis’s call for an integral ecology with writing and teaching that focuses on areas of overlap and resonance between traditions of Christian mysticism and important voices in conservation and writing about nature in the U.S.
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Ann W. Astell
Professor
History of Christianity | Hagiography as Biblical Commentary; the Song of Songs and the Liturgy | Ann W. Astell is Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of six books, most recently Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages (2006), and is now completing a monograph on hagiography and the Bible. She has been the recipient of an N.E.H. fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She has edited eight collections of essays, most recently Saving Fear in Christian Spirituality (2020). Past President of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and also of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, she has published recently in Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Spiritus, Theological Studies, Marian Studies, and Religion and Literature.
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Yury P. Avvakumov
Associate Professor
History of Christianity |Papacy and Eastern Churches; scholastic theology; Latin and Byzantine ecclesiology and sacramental theology; Russian and Ukrainian religious thought of the 19th and 20th century. | Avvakumov is a historian of Christianity who specializes in the Later Medieval and Early Modern periods, with a focus on scholasticism, ecclesiology, and relations between the papacy and Byzantium, and in Russian and Ukrainian religious history and thought of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is also broadly engaged with the history, ecclesiology, and liturgy of Byzantine-rite Christianity in communion with Rome (“Uniate”, or “Greco-Catholic” Christianity) from its medieval beginnings to the present day. His special research interest is the fateful history of Catholic and Orthodox Christians under Soviet totalitarianism and their role in contemporary post-communist societies. Avvakumov obtained doctorates in Orthodox theology in St. Petersburg, Russia, and in Catholic theology in Munich, Germany. Prior to coming to Notre Dame in 2010, he held academic positions in Germany, Ukraine, and Russia, including at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lemberg where he served as Dean of Humanities and as the founding chair of the Department of Classical, Byzantine, and Medieval Studies in 2006-2009. Courses he teaches include “Latin West and Byzantine East 1054-1596: Clash and Communion”; “Popes, Patriarchs, and Councils: Medieval Church and Ecclesiology”; “Introduction to Scholastic Theology”; “Theology of the Byzantine Liturgy”; “Russian Religious Thought”; “Eastern Churches: History and Theology”. A trained singer, he also teaches a college seminar “Heaven and Hell: Musical Theater” based on operas and oratorios by Bach, Lully, Meyerbeer, Wagner, and Mussorgsky.
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Steven Battin
Assistant Professor
Systematic Theology | His present research contributes to the ongoing development of liberation theologies by way of placing Catholic theology in conversation with decolonial, indigenous, and African-American-based post-capitalist movements. | Steven Battin specializes in contemporary systematic and constructive theology. He is particularly committed to the exploration of ecclesiology, christology, and soteriology from non-dominant perspectives.
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Kimberly Belcher
Associate Professor
Liturgical Studies | Sacramental and liturgical theology, ritual studies, ecumenism, phenomenology, and Trinitarian theology. | Professor Belcher grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and attended the University of Florida, where she earned a B.S. in Mathematics and Chemistry. It was at the university parish of St .Augustine's that she became interested in liturgy and theology. Coming to Notre Dame for graduate work, she eventually received an M.T.S. and Ph.D. in liturgical studies. She taught at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, before returning to Notre Dame on the faculty in 2013. Professor Belcher has three children.
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John Betz
Associate Professor
Systematic Theology | Christian Metaphysics | With a background in philosophy, theology, and German literature, John Betz’s work is broadly engaged with German philosophy and theology from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Within this period his research has focused on the Protestant Counter-Enlightenment as exemplified in the work of the Lutheran philologist and man of letters, Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), and on twentieth-century Catholic metaphysics and ontology as exemplified in the work of the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Erich Przywara (1889-1972). In addition to resourcing and translating historically important, but neglected figures and texts, his work seeks to recover the relevance of Christian metaphysics to theology, the life of the Church, and the intellectus fidei today. To this end he is currently working on a monograph on Przywara and on a collection of essays on the topic of analogical metaphysics
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Jeremy Phillip Brown
Assistant Professor
History of Christianity |Medieval Judaism, Iberian Kabbalah, Jewish-Christian Polemic |Jeremy Phillip Brown is Assistant Professor of Theology specializing in medieval Judaism. He completed his BA in Religion at Reed College, and earned his doctorate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Brown has taught at the University of San Francisco, and served as Simon and Ethel Flegg Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal. Research interests include the Zohar, the penitential discourses of Kabbalah and Jewish pietism, Jewish-Christian polemic in medieval Iberia, and the dissemination of Kabbalah in Latin America.
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John C. Cavadini
Professor
History of Christianity, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | He teaches, studies, and publishes in the area of patristic theology and in its early medieval reception. | John C. Cavadini is a Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, having served as Chair from 1997-2010. Since 2000 he has served as the Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame. He received a B.A. in 1975 from Wesleyan University; an M.A. in 1979 from Marquette University; M.A., 1981, M.Phil., 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1988 from Yale University. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1990, Cavadini teaches, studies and publishes in patristic and early medieval theology, the theology of Augustine, and the history of biblical and patristic exegesis. He has served a five-year term on the International Theological Commission (appointed by Pope Benedict XVI) and in 2018 received the Monika K. Hellwig Award from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Intellectual Life. As Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, he inaugurated the Echo program in catechetical leadership, the Notre Dame Vision program for high school students and is responsible for the continued growth and outreach of the McGrath Institute, which partners with Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools to address pastoral challenges with theological depth and rigor.
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Catherine Cavadini
Director of Master of Arts
Associate Teaching ProfessorHistory of Christianity |The history of biblical interpretation, especially medieval interpretation of the Song of Songs. |Katie teaches courses within the undergraduate and MA curriculum as well as directing the MA Program.
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David Clairmont
Associate Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics | Ethics and Spirituality, Theology and Business Ethics, Comparative Religious Ethics | Clairmont studies comparative religious ethics, particularly the moral thought of Roman Catholicism and Theravada Buddhism, issues of method in Catholic moral theology, and the connection between ethics and spirituality. He is interested in questions of moral formation, inter-cultural dialogue in the Church, and the history of Christian spirituality (especially the Benedictine and Franciscan traditions). He is co-editor (with Don S. Browning) of American Religions and the Family: How Faith Traditions Cope with Modernization (Columbia University Press, 2007) and author of Moral Struggle and Religious Ethics: On the Person as Classic in Comparative Theological Contexts (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). His articles have appeared in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Religious Ethics, and the Journal of Moral Theology. His current projects include an introduction to comparative religious ethics (with William Schweiker) tentatively titled Religious Ethics: Meaning and Method, the co-edited Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics (with William Schweiker, Maria Antonaccio, and Elizabeth Bucar), a book on the religious ethics of Thomas Merton, and a book on theology and business ethics tentatively titled Love and Accounting.
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Michael Connors, CSC
Associate Professor of the Practice
| Homiletics, Pastoral/Practical Theology, Inculturation | A Holy Cross priest, Fr. Connors hails from the Chicago area. As a pastoral/practical theologian and homiletician, his interests range over the variety of practices that make up the Christian Church.
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Brian Daley, SJ
Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology, Emeritus
History of Christianity, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | Patristic Christology, Eschatology, Theology of Mary, Ecumenical Theology | Born in Orange, NJ, in 1940, Fr. Daley did his undergraduate work at Fordham University and a subsequent M.A, (classics and philosophy) at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He then entered the Society of Jesus, taught for a year at Fordham, and studied theology for ordination in Frankfurt, Germany. He returned to Oxford in 1972 for doctoral studies, focused on the Patristic Christological tradition, and completed a critical edition of the works of the sixth-century theologian Leontius of Byzantium in 1978. He then was a faculty member of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, in Cambridge, MA, until 1996, when he moved to Notre Dame's Department of Theology as the Catherine Huisking Professor. He considers himself a historical theologian, studying the thought and practices of the first seven or eight centuries of Christianity as expressions of the developing common faith of the Church, especially as it is focused on our understanding of the person of Christ, the Trinity, and the hope for eternal life. His most recent book is: God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford University Press, 2018).
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Michael Driscoll
Professor Emeritus
Liturgical Studies |Currently working on a book on Liturgy and Aesthetic and manual on the ars celebrandi |Michael S. Driscoll is a priest of the diocese of Helena, Montana. Ordained in 1977, he has spent the majority of his years in priesthood teaching -- first at Carroll College, the diocesan college in Helena from 1981-1994, and then at the University of Notre Dame since 1994 to the present. He entered into emeritus status in January of 2016 and still teaches the occasional course usually in the Fall semester. He is an active member of several professional groups having served in the leadership of each: North American Academy of Liturgy (NAAL), the Societas Liturgica, and the Catholic Academy of Liturgy (CAL). He is the founding director of the Masters program in Sacred Music (MSM) and the Interdisciplinary Minor in Liturgical Music Ministry at Notre Dame since 2005. Fr. Driscoll’s writings on the liturgy have brought him into the area of social justice as the lived experience of faith flowing from the Eucharist, as seen in Sacraments and Justice (Liturgical Press, 2014). He is very interested in making the connection between liturgy and life, between the Eucharist and ethics.
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Terrence Ehrman, CSC
Assistant Teaching Professor
Systematic Theology |Theology of Creation |Fr. Terrence P. Ehrman, C.S.C. investigates the relationship between theology and science, particularly the life sciences of ecology and evolution. His interests include understanding who God is as Creator, who we are as creatures, and what our relationship is to God, ourselves, and the natural world. He teaches courses in the theology department entitled Science, Theology, and Creation and Theology and Ecology. From 2016-19, Fr. Ehrman was the assistant director of the Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing at Notre Dame. He has a B.S. in biology and M.Div. from Notre Dame, M.S. in aquatic ecology from Virginia Tech, and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from The Catholic University of America. He is originally from Baltimore, Maryland and was ordained a Holy Cross priest in 2000.
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Nathan Eubank
Rev. John A. O'Brien Associate Professor of Theology
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | Synoptic Gospels, the Letters of Paul, Reception of New Testament Texts in Antiquity | Nathan Eubank's research centers on the Synoptic Gospels and Paul, as well as ancient biblical interpretation. He is currently working on merit in early Christianity and its role in the construction of Christian origins.
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David Fagerberg
Professor Emeritus
Liturgical Studies | Applying the perspective of liturgical theology to (a) dogmatics, and (b) mysticism. | Fagerberg holds a B.A. from Augsburg College (1972), M.Div. from Luther Northwestern Seminary (1977), M.A. from St. John’s University, Collegeville (1982), S.T.M. from Yale Divinity School (1983), and M.A., M.Phil., and PhD. from Yale University (1991). He taught in the Religion Department of Concordia College, Moorhead, MN, from 1988-2001; the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein Seminary 2002-03; he has been at Notre Dame since 2003. His area of study is liturgical theology – its definition and methodology – and how the Church’s lex orandi (law of prayer) is the foundation for her lex credendi (law of belief). He also has interests in sacramental theology, Eastern Orthodoxy, linguistic philosophy, scholasticism, G. K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.
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Margot Fassler
Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy, Emeritus
Liturgical Studies, History of Christianity | Theology, Liturgy, and the Arts; Congregational Studies; Sacred Music |Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy, University of Notre Dame, is Director of the Program in Sacred Music and Tangeman Professor of Music History, Emerita, Yale University. Recent books include Music in the Medieval West and its accompanying Anthology (New York, 2014); (with Jeffery Hamburger, Eva Schlotheuber, and Susan Marti) Life and Latin Learning at Paradies bei Soest, 1300-1425: Inscription and Illumination in the Choir Books of a North German Dominican Convent, 2 vols. (Munster, 2016), and Medieval Cantors and Their Craft (ed. with Katie Bugyis and AB Kraebel) York Medieval Press, 2017. Fassler is a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, a former President of the Medieval Academy of America, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. Her digital work includes documentary studies of contemporary congregations. Her book: Cosmos, Liturgy and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard’s Illuminated Scivias is forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press. A digital model of creation and cosmos based on the illuminations of Scivias (with Christian Jara) will appear in 2021. These works have been supported by grants from the Luce Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the ACLS. In 2019-20, Fassler was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
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John Fitzgerald
Professor
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | Pastoral Epistles | After completing his MDiv. degree at Yale Divinity School, John T. Fitzgerald spent a year in Germany on a Rotary Fellowship, studying Hellenistic Judaism at the University of Tübingen. He returned to Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in New Testament in 1984. He spent more than three decades (1981-2012) as a faculty member in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he also held various administrative positions and chaired the Department of Religious Studies. Since 2012 he has been Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. In addition, Fitzgerald has been a visiting associate professor at Brown University (1992) and the Yale Divinity School (1997-1998, 2004), and since 2008 he has served as Professor Extraordinary for the Faculty of Theology at North-West University in South Africa. The author of more than 85 articles and more than 170 book notes/reviews, he is also the author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books. His current major projects are a commentary on the Pastoral Epistles for the Hermeneia series and a revised, updated edition of Everett Ferguson’s Backgrounds of Early Christianity.
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Nina Glibetić
Assistant Professor
Liturgical Studies | History of the Byzantine Liturgy, Pre-Modern Ritual Culture, Sinai Monasticism, Christianity among Medieval Slavs, Sacred Space & Ritual Purity, Medieval Liturgy and Gender | Professor Glibetić teaches in the field of liturgical studies. Her research is interdisciplinary, drawing principally from liturgiology, medieval history, ritual studies, and Byzantine and Slavic studies. She has received several fellowships, including at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Dumbarton Oaks, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Professor Glibetić has published on a variety of topics, such as the development of eucharistic practices in Byzantium, the liturgy of early Slavs on the Sinai, religious rituals for women at childbirth and miscarriage, and the impact of liturgy on the formation of national identity. Before coming to Notre Dame, she was an Assistant Professor in Liturgical Studies at the Catholic University of America. Glibetić is also currently (2018-2020) a member of an international research team supported by the Austrian Science Fund and dedicated to studying the Glagolitic manuscripts discovered at St Catherine's Monastery on Mt Sinai in 1975. You can find more about this project, entitled "The Origin of the Glagolitic‐Old Church Slavonic Manuscripts," here.
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Jennie Grillo
Tisch Family Associate Professor
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | The interpretation of the Old Testament in conversation with Christian theology | Jennie Grillo teaches courses in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Before coming to Notre Dame she taught at Duke Divinity School, UMass Amherst, Amherst College, and Harvard. She is the author of The Story of Israel in the Book of Qohelet: Ecclesiastes as Cultural Memory (Oxford University Press 2012), which won a Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. Her current book project is a study of the Additions to Daniel in the history of interpretation, and her interests include wisdom literature, ideas of idolatry in the Old Testament, the history of the Bible as a book, and reading the Bible through its reception in art, literature, and liturgy. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the ACLS, the Louisville Institute, the National Humanities Center, and a Mellon Fellowship in Critical Bibliography from Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. She and her husband Luca are parents to two young girls.
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Daniel Groody, CSC
Associate Professor
Systematic Theology | Theologies of Migration, Spirituality of Immigrants, the Heart’s Desire and Social Change |Father Dan Groody, associate professor of theology and global affairs, is the Vice President and Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education. His major responsibilities include advancing undergraduate teaching, research, and outreach as well as overseeing Academic Services for Student-Athletes, the Center for University Advising, the Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement, the Moreau First Year Experience course, and the work of the Core Curriculum Committee. He also provides leadership for the student accommodations process and chairs the Advisory Committee on the Academic Code and Policy (ACACP), the University Committee on the Honor Code (UCHC), and the Valedictorian and Salutatorian Selection Committee. In addition to his role in the provost’s office, Father Groody serves as a Fellow and Trustee of the University and is the adviser for discernment and discovery for Notre Dame’s Inspired Leadership Initiative. An internationally recognized expert on migration and refugee issues whose papers and books have been translated into seven languages, he is the author of Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace and Border of Death, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit. He has edited or co-edited four books on poverty, justice, and migration. Father Groody’s expertise in and passion for refugee and migration issues has also been applied as executive producer of several acclaimed films and documentaries, including One Border, One Body: Immigration and the Eucharist and Dying to Live: A Migrant’s Journey. Father Groody has worked with the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the World Council of Churches, the Vatican, and the United Nations on issues of theology, globalization, migration, and refugees. In 2007-08 he was a visiting research fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 2000, Father Groody is a faculty fellow of the University’s Kellogg Institute, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Institute for Educational Initiatives, Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights, Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. Father Groody earned his bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame, a master of divinity degree and a licentiate in sacred theology from the Jesuit School of Theology, and his doctorate in theology from the Graduate Theological Union.
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Kevin G. Grove, CSC
Assistant Professor
Systematic Theology | His research includes memory, Christology, St. Augustine, and the theological writings of Basil Moreau. | Born and raised in Montana, Kevin Grove was ordained a Holy Cross priest at Notre Dame in 2010. After doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge and before joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Grove was a post-doctoral researcher at L’Institut Catholique in Paris, France and a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to his research and teaching, Grove serves pastorally at Notre Dame as an assistant faculty chaplain, chaplain to the Master of Divinity program, and as a pastoral resident for undergraduates in Dunne Hall.
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Kristi Haas
Assistant Teaching Professor
Systematic Theology |The theology of Louis Bouyer (1913-2004), the development of Catholic ecological theology, charisms and holiness in ecclesial life |Kristi Haas grew up in Davenport, Iowa, and received her B.A. (magna cum laude, Glynn Family Honors Program) and M.A. (Echo Program) from the University of Notre Dame. She completed further theological studies through the M.T.S. at Boston College and worked at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture before returning to pursue the Ph.D. in the Department of Theology. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Catholic systematic theology, especially the thought of Louis Bouyer (1913-2004) and the development of Catholic ecological theology. Haas serves as Associate Director of the M.A. Program and teaches courses such as Foundations of Theology, the Church, and Theology of Prayer.
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Mary Catherine Hilkert
Professor
Systematic Theology | Theology Anthropology, Feminist and Intercultural Theologies, the Interrelationship of Theology, Preaching, and Spirituality | Professor Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P., specializes in contemporary systematic theology with particular focus on theological anthropology, fundamental theology, Christology, and feminist theologies and spirituality. Her current research project is a book titled Words of Spirit and Life: Theology, Preaching and Spirituality. A former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America (2005-2006), Dr. Hilkert holds three honorary doctorates and has been the recipient of Washington Theological Union’s Sophia Award for Theological Excellence in Service of Ministry, Barry University's Yves Congar Award for Theological Excellence, and the Ann O’Hara Graff Award for her contributions to the integration of academic and pastoral theology with particular attention to the voices of women. A member of the Dominican Sisters of Peace, Sr. Hilkert has lectured and preached in Catholic and ecumenical contexts in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and South Africa.
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Mary Hirschfeld
Associate Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics |Economics and theology |Mary Hirschfeld works on the boundaries between theology and economics using an approach rooted in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. She has written on economic inequality, the technocratic paradigm, the financial crisis and the common good.
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Robin Jensen
Director of Master of Theological Studies
Patrick O'Brien Professor of TheologyLiturgical Studies, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Early Christian art and archaeology |Robin Jensen’s research and publication focuses on the relationship between early Christian art and literature and examines the ways that visual images and architectural spaces should be regarded as modes of theological expression. Her published essays and books contend that, in addition to interpreting sacred texts, visual images enhance liturgical settings, reflect the nature and content of devotional piety, and explicate ritual practices. She teaches courses on the character of late antique Christian and Jewish art, the history and evolution of Christian architecture, the iconography of the cross and crucifix, depictions of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and the place and controversies over images and idols in ancient and early medieval Christianity. Additionally, she has researched the practices, distinctive character, and material evidence of Christianity in ancient Roman North Africa. Her current project, tentatively titled "From Idols to Icons" (under contract with the University of California Press) examines the emergence of a Christian material piety in the fourth and fifth centuries. This work discusses the perceived danger of visual representations of divine beings, early controversies over the miraculous power of saints' shrines and relics, the sacralization of structures and geographical places, and the belief that images may facilitate the presence of holy persons in their absence.
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Maxwell E. Johnson
Professor
Liturgical Studies | Johnson's research interests are in the origins and development of early Christian Liturgy, with a special focus on the Rites of Christian Initiation, the Eucharistic Liturgy, and the Feasts and Seasons of the Liturgical Year. He is currently collaborating with with Stefanos Alexopoulos in writing a one-volume introduction to the Liturgies of the Christian East. |The Rev. Canon Dr. Maxwell E. Johnson is professor of Theology (Liturgical Studies) and a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The author or editor of 25 books and of more than 90 articles and essays, he is also a past president of the North American Academy of Liturgy, and served for 25 years as an editorial consultant for Worship, Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville, MN, and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Ecclesia Orans, The Pontifical Liturgical Institute, Sant’ Anselmo, Rome. He will receive the Berakah Award from the North American Academy of Liturgy in January, 2022.
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Emmanuel Katongole
Professor
World Religions and World Church | Politics and Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa; Political Theology; Global Catholicism; Theology and Peace Studies, Reconciliation | Emmanuel Katongole is Professor of Theology and Peace Studies. He holds a joint appointment with the Keough School of Global Affairs, where he serves as a full time faculty of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Before joining the University of Notre Dame (Jan 2013), he served as Associate Professor of Theology and World Christianity at Duke University, and as founding co-director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. A member of the Contending Modernities Initiative team, Katongole coordinates an inter-disciplinary research project, which investigates how religious and secular forces compete or collaborate in shaping new modes of authority, community and identity within the context of nation-state modalities in Africa. He is a Catholic priest of Kampala Archdiocese, Uganda where he was ordained in 1987.
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Paul Kollman, CSC
Associate Professor
World Religions and World Church, History of Christianity | I am currently preparing a manuscript on the Catholic missionary evangelization of eastern Africa. | Paul Kollman, CSC, is associate professor of theology and has been on the faculty at Notre Dame in the Department of Theology since 2001. Before that he taught at the Queen of Apostles Philosophy Seminary in Jinja, Uganda, and Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Since being at Notre Dame he has also taught at Tangaza College, Nairobi, Kenya. His scholarship focuses on African Christianity, mission history, and world Christianity, and he has taught and carried out research in Africa and in archives around the world. Kollman earned his PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School (2001), and a BA and MDiv from Notre Dame (1984, 1990). He is the author of The Evangelization of Slaves and Catholic Origins in Eastern Africa, co-author of Understanding World Christianity: Eastern Africa, and numerous other publications in professional journals. He has served as executive director of Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concerns, as president of the American Society of Missiology, and is currently president of the International Association of Mission Studies. Kollman is also a fellow of the Kellogg, Kroc, and Nanovic Institutes at Notre Dame. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Kollman currently lives in O’Neill Hall at Notre Dame.
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David Lantigua
Associate Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics, World Religions and World Church |Modern Catholic social tradition; Spanish scholastic moral, legal, and political thought; human rights and social movements; Latin American theology and Indigenous cultures; (neo)colonialism and history of international law; comparative religious ethics |Born of Latino immigrants, Prof. Lantigua graduated with a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame. He taught previously at The Catholic University of America, and has been a graduate fellow of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study and past recipient of the Louisville Institute Sabbatical Research Grant. He previously served as Co-Director of the Catholic Social Tradition minor in the Center for Social Concerns. He is currently the William W. and Anna Jean Cushwa Co-Director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.Prof. Lantigua teaches undergraduate courses on God and Slavery in the Americas and Catholic Social Teaching. He has served on exam and dissertation committees for graduate students in the areas of Moral Theology, History of Christianity, World Religions and World Church, and the Departments of Political Science and History. Prof. Lantigua is currently writing a monograph on the Latin American theological and cultural dimensions of Pope Francis’s social teachings and its implications for global Catholicism in the twenty-first century.Aside from spending time in the Florida sunshine with family, he enjoys playing fútbol with his children and cheering for the US and Paraguayan (and Argentine) national teams.
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Ulrich L. Lehner
William K. Warren Professor
History of Christianity |History of Christianity after 1500, Global Catholic Studies, Early Modern History, Gender and Race in the History of Catholicism, 19th and 20th c. European History and Culture |Ulrich L. Lehner specializes in religious history and theology of the Early Modern period and the Enlightenment. Among his publications are over ten authored books and more than fifteen edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600-1800 (Oxford UP: 2016), Women, Enlightenment, and Catholicism: A Transnational Biographical History (Routledge: 2018), and most recently Innovation in Early Modern Catholicism (Routledge: 2021). He was selected as a Member and Herodotus Fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, a fellow at the Institute for Comparative History of Religious Orders at the University of Eichstätt, Distinguished Fellow at the NDIAS (twice), fellow of the Earhart foundation (twice), and fellow of the Humboldt and Friedrich von Siemens Foundation. In 2014 he was inducted into the European Academy for Sciences and Arts, in 2018 into the Accademia Ambrosiana, and in 2022 into the Academia Europea.
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Blake Leyerle
Professor
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity |John Chrysostom and domestic devotions; early Christian pilgrimage; animals |Blake Leyerle's scholarly specialization lies in the social and cultural history of early Christianity. She has published on a wide range of topics (such as almsgiving, children, table manners, domestic devotions, travel and communication, pilgrimage, the theater, asceticism, urban life, amulets, sewers, animals, and the emotions), but has a particular interest in John Chrysostom. All of her work is marked by a commitment to incorporating material reality as well as the insights of critical theory. She is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and the North American Patristics Society, and has served in multiple capacities on their steering and planning committees. Since 1990, she has taught at all levels at Notre Dame and been recognized for her excellence in teaching. A founding member of the interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Early Christian Studies at Notre Dame, she was its longest-serving director. Her most recent book, The Narrative Shape of Emotion in the Preaching of John Chrysostom, was published by the University of California Press in 2020. Another monograph, Christians at Home: John Chrysostom on Domestic Rituals, is forthcoming from Penn State Press (June 2024). Her next book project focuses on early Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
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David Lincicum
Associate Professor
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | The Epistle of Barnabas, the Wisdom of Solomon, the History of Biblical Interpretation | Doing my best to honor a long tradition, I work at the intersection of early Jewish, early Christian and New Testament studies. My research has especially focused on investigating early Christian and Jewish biblical interpretation, Pauline literature, and the history of interpretation. I hope that my monograph on Paul and the Early Jewish Encounter with Deuteronomy makes some contribution not only to an understanding of Paul, but also to the apprehension of Second Temple Judaism and the relation between the Old and New Testaments. I'm currently at work on an edition, translation, introduction and commentary for the curious text known as the Epistle of Barnabas. All of this research reflects my broad interest in New Testament and Early Christian studies, but also my attempt to grapple seriously, in cross-disciplinary investigations, with Second Temple Judaism, the formation of self-consciously Christian appropriations of the Old Testament, and the history of New Testament study, including the theological reception of the New Testament as Scripture. More distant glimmers on the horizon include work on the reception of the Wisdom of Solomon.
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Daniel Machiela
Director of Doctoral Program
Associate ProfessorChristianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Ancient Judaism; early biblical interpretation; the Dead Sea Scrolls |Daniel Machiela teaches in the area of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, with core research interests in early biblical interpretation and ancient Jewish literature. His published work has focused mainly on the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially those written in Aramaic. Additional interests include Aramaic and Hebrew language, the Septuagint, and the New Testament within the wider scope of ancient Judaism. He is currently working on an introduction to the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, with commentary projects on the Genesis Apocryphon and the book of Tobit on the more distant horizon. Before moving to Notre Dame in 2022, he taught for fourteen years at McMaster University.
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Bradley Malkovsky
Associate Professor
World Religions and World Church, Systematic Theology | Christianity and Other Religions: Comparative Spirituality, Comparative Eschatology, Comparative Doctrines of the Divine. | Malkovsky's area of interest is the doctrinal and spiritual relation of Christianity to Other Religions. His area of specialization is the Hindu-Christian Encounter. He was the editor of the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies from 2002-17.
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Jay Martin
Assistant Teaching Professor
Systematic Theology |Systematic Theology, Trinity, Psychoanalytic theory, Marxist thought, German Idealism, French phenomenology and postmodernism |Jay Martin writes and researches at the intersection of Catholic systematic theology, psychoanalysis, French and German philosophical thought, and emancipatory political theory, as well on issues in science and religion, comparative theology, and culture.
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Jennifer Newsome Martin
Associate Professor
Systematic Theology |19th and 20th century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thought, Theological Aesthetics, Trinitarian Theology, Religion and Literature, Ressourcement Theology, French Feminisms |Jennifer Newsome Martin is a Catholic systematic theologian with particular expertise in the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Her first book, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought, was one of 10 winners internationally of the 2017 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She serves on the editorial board of Religion & Literature and the University of Notre Dame Press and has a history of leadership positions with the Hans Urs von Balthasar Consultation of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the steering committees for the Christian Systematic Theology Unit and the Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit in the American Academy of Religion. She has a joint appointment in the Program of Liberal Studies.
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Timothy Matovina
Professor
History of Christianity | Latino/a theologies and Latino/a Catholicism | Timothy Matovina works in the area of Faith and Culture, with specialization in U.S. Catholic and U.S. Latino theology and religion. Professor Matovina has authored over 150 essays and reviews in scholarly and opinion journals. He has also written or edited 20 books, most recently Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church, which won five book awards, including selection as a CHOICE “Outstanding Academic Title,” as well as Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Era of Conquest to Pope Francis. Among his various scholarly awards, in 2010 Matovina received the Virgilio Elizondo Award “for distinguished achievement in theology, in keeping with the mission of the Academy” from the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of the United States (ACHTUS). At Notre Dame he has won two teaching awards, including the Julian Samora Award that members of Notre Dame’s La Alianza student organization confer on a faculty member whose research, teaching, and service advance knowledge and empowerment of Latino/a students and communities. In addition to his scholarly work, Matovina offers presentations and workshops on U.S. Catholicism and Latino ministry and theology throughout the United States.
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William C. Mattison III
Wilsey Professor of Theology
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics |Fundamental Moral Theology, Virtue, St. Thomas Aquinas, Scripture and Ethics |Prof. Mattison completed his doctoral studies at the University of Notre Dame. During these years he studied Thomistic moral theology under Dr. Jean Porter, and spent a year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Fribourg, Switzerland doing dissertation research under the guidance of Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. He then spent two years as a Visiting Assistant professor at Notre Dame, and another two at Mount St. Mary's University in Emmitsburg, MD before joining the faculty at the Catholic University of America’s School of Theology & Religious Studies.Prof. Mattison spent ten years at The Catholic University of America. After tenure he served as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, and one year as Interim Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies. He also began to write and speak on Catholic higher education. He returned to Notre Dame in 2016 with a joint appointment as Wilsey Family Associate Professor in the Department of Theology as well as Senior Advisor for Theological Formation in the Alliance for Catholic Education, where he helped prepare Catholic school teachers.Prof. Mattison is now the Wilsey Professor of Theology, and he continues to write and to teach students at the doctoral, Masters (including seminarians), and undergraduate levels. He was also named in 2023 the Faculty Director of the Moreau First Year Experience, leading the reconception and implementation of the Moreau seminars, part of the Core Curriculum for all Notre Dame undergraduates. Besides having served in leadership roles in the Ethics and Catholic Theology Group and Moral Theology Groups at the Society of Christian Ethics and Catholic Theological Society of America, respectively, Prof. Mattison co-founded and served as Executive Director of the annual New Wine, New Wineskins symposium for pre-tenure Catholic moral theologians.
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Gerald McKenny
Walter Professor of Theology
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics | Natural and Revealed law, the Decalogue and Christian ethics | McKenny teaches and writes on Christian ethics and the ethics of biotechnology. He is the author of To Relieve the Human Condition (SUNY Press, 1997), The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology (Oxford University Press, 2010), and Biotechnology, Human Nature and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2018) along with about fifty articles and book chapters in Christian ethics, biomedical ethics, the ethics of biotechnology, religious ethics, and the philosophy of medicine. He is co-editor of four books, including The Ethical (Blackwell, 2003), Altering Nature (two volumes) (Springer, 2008), and Darwin in the Twenty-first Century (Notre Dame, 2015). He is currently finishing a second book on Karl Barth's ethics and has begun work on a one-volume Christian ethics based on the Gospel story of the rich young ruler.
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Francesca Murphy
Professor
Systematic Theology | Aesthetics of Ressourcement | Francesca Aran Murphy is the author of numerous books, including Christ the Form of Beauty (T & T Clark), God is Not a Story (OUP) and a theological commentary on I Samuel (Brazos). She is currently editing a series for Bloomsbury Academic called Illuminating Modernity.
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Stacey Noem
Associate Professor of the Practice
| Formation for those preparing to serve the Catholic Church as Lay Ecclesial Ministers. Community Formation and Development especially concerning communication and conflict resolution. Formation for Marriage and Family Life. | Stacey is currently the Director of Human and Spiritual Formation for lay students in the Masters of Divinity program. She came from our sister Holy Cross institution, the University of Portland in Oregon where she served for 7 years in Campus Ministry as Assistant Director of Faith Formation. She is currently an officer for the Association of Graduate Programs in Ministry and a former member of the Executive Board of the Catholic Campus Ministry Association. In 2014 she worked with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps to reshape their domestic orientation program nationally. A former Jesuit Volunteer in Alaska, she has also worked extensively with JVC:NW, PACE, and ECHO on community formation and development. Stacey received her Masters of Divinity from the University of Notre Dame in 2005. Raised on the Gulf Coast of Florida, she has been married since 1998 and has three pretty great children.
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Tzvi Novick
Abrams Jewish Thought and Culture Professor of Theology
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity | Rabbinic law and liturgy | Professor Novick completed a B.A. from Yale University with a degree in philosophy. After a very brief but instructive legal career, and an MA in Hebrew Bible from Yeshiva University, he enrolled in the PhD program in Religious Studies at Yale, from which he graduated in 2008 with a focus on early rabbinic Judaism (ca. 2nd to 6th c.). Professor Novick has taught at Notre Dame ever since, on subjects ranging from the Bible to modern Judaism and post-Holocaust literature and theology.
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Kenneth Oakes
Assistant Professor
Systematic Theology | Contemporary systematic theology, Modern Protestant thought, the theology of Karl Barth, theologies of creative retrieval | Originally from Southern California, Kenneth Oakes completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of John Webster at the University of Aberdeen before taking up postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Tübingen and Notre Dame.
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Paulinus I. Odozor, C.S.Sp.
Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics, World Religions and World Church | Working on projects relating to sex and sexuality in an ecumenical age; working on projects about virtues in Africa, etc | Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, C.S.Sp., is a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans). He received his initial formation in Nigeria and did his graduate studies at St Michaels College, Toronto, Regis College, Toronto, and the University of Toronto. Odozor's scholarly interests are in Foundational issues in Christian ethics; history of Catholic moral theology; contextual theological issues, including questions pertaining to inculturation; theology and society; African Christian theology; and the theology of marriage. Fr, Odozor is also an Africanist with interest in African history, African literature, African politics and questions relating to change and contemporary African societies. In addition to being the author of many articles in peer-reviewed publications in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, Fr Odozor has also authored or edited nine books. Fr. Odozor held numerous academic, administrative, and pastoral positions in Nigeria and Canada. He was president of the Governing Council of Spiritan International School of Theology in Enugu, Nigeria(2005-2017) and was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as expert assistant to the 2009 Synod of Bishops for Africa.
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Cyril O'Regan
Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology
Systematic Theology, History of Christianity | I am currently finishing up my volumes on the relationship between Hans Urs von Balthasar and Martin Heidegger. | Born in Ireland where I received my BA and MA in Philosophy. My Ph. D is from Yale where I taught in the Department of Religious Studies before I came to the Department of Theology at Notre Dame in 1999. My work spans a number of areas, systematic theology, historical theology, and continental philosophy, and I am especially active at the intersection of theology and continental philosophy. I have done considerable work in 19th-century theology and philosophy, postmodern thought, mysticism, apocalyptic, Gnosticism, religion and literature, major Catholic figures such as Newman, de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Benedict XVI, and on the doctrines of the Trinity and "last things." I will shortly complete two volumes dealing with the relationship between the Swiss theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Martin Heidegger. I will then turn to complete my Gnosticism in Modernity project. I intend to write in order a volume on Gnosticism and German Idealism and subsequently a volume on Gnosticism and German and English Romanticism. I teach a wide array of courses on all levels and am very active in directing doctoral students.
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(The Rev.) Hugh R. Page, Jr.
Professor
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Page’s scholarly interests include early Hebrew poetry, Africana biblical interpretation, esoterism in Africa and the African Diaspora, poetry as a medium for theological expression, and the use of religious traditions and sacred texts in the construction of individual and corporate identity in the Africana world. |(The Rev. Canon) Hugh R. Page, Jr. is Professor of Theology and Africana Studies. He also serves as Vice President, Associate Provost, and Dean of the First Year of Studies. An Episcopal priest, Page holds a bachelor’s in history from Hampton University, two master’s degrees from The General Theological Seminary in New York, a doctorate in ministry from the Graduate Theological Foundation, and a master’s and doctorate in Near Eastern languages and civilizations from Harvard University. He joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1992 and, in 2001, received a Presidential Award for distinguished service to the University.
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Anthony Pagliarini
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Assistant Teaching ProfessorChristianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Prophecy, Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology |Anthony Pagliarini grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania (Wilkes-Barre). After earning his BA in theology and philosophy at Notre Dame, he taught high school in a Catholic mission parish in Belize. He then moved to Rome to study theology at the Angelicum and work as a guide in the Vatican Necropolis (the "Scavi"). He spent the following three years in Austria completing masters work at the International Theological Institute. He then returned to Rome for further study at Pontifical Biblical Institute and the École Biblique. After completing his SSL, he returned to Notre Dame to begin doctoral work in Old Testament. He now teaches in the Department of Theology and is the Director of Undergraduate Studies. His course offerings include “Foundations of Theology,” “The Catholic Faith,” “Introduction to the New Testament,” “Psalms and Wisdom Literature,” “Prophets,” “Theology of Creation,” and “Intensive Intermediate Hebrew.” Anthony and his wife Katie live in South Bend with their four children.
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Margaret Pfeil
Teaching Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics | Catholic Social Teaching, Racial Justice, Nonviolence, Ecological Ethics, Ecumenism | Dr. Margaret R. Pfeil holds a joint appointment in the Department of Theology and the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame and is a Faculty Fellow of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights. She is a founder and resident of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Worker Community in South Bend, Indiana.
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R. Trent Pomplun
Associate Professor
World Religions and World Church |Mission History, Tibetan Studies, Buddhist Studies, Late Medieval and Early Modern Scholasticism, History of Religions |Prof. Pomplun’s expertise extends from late medieval to modern thought, with special emphasis on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has published on the history of scholastic theology, Catholic missions in Asia, and Indo-Tibetan religion and culture. He is chiefly absorbed in the study of Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit who lived in Tibet during the early eighteenth century. When not squinting at Tibetan manuscripts, he studies both eastern and western traditions of scholasticism.
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Mark L. Poorman, C.S.C.
Associate Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics |Moral Theology and Pastoral Practice; Applied Christian Ethics |Father Poorman returned to the Theology Department as Associate Professor of Theology after serving full-time in senior-level administrative positions in Holy Cross institutions, including Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, as well as Executive Vice President and President at the University of Portland. During his administrative service he continued teaching undergraduate moral theology courses in character formation, virtue ethics, and applied Christian ethics in the areas of sexuality, Catholic health care, and justice issues. He has also served as Director of the Master of Divinity program for the Department. In addition to his administrative responsibilities, he has been a member of numerous governing boards in Catholic higher education and health care institutions. As part of his pastoral service in the Congregation of Holy Cross, he resided in undergraduate residence halls and continues to minister in the residential mission of Holy Cross at Notre Dame. His academic interests lie in the intersection of moral theology and pastoral practice, with past publications in that theoretical area, as well as the mission of Catholic higher education, models for theological reflection in ministry education, and ethical issues in end-of-life care and decision-making.
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Jean Porter
John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics | Aquinas' virtue theory, theories of life | Jean Porter is the author of numerous articles and six books on the history of the Christian moral tradition and its contemporary relevance. She has a particular interest in the moral theology of Aquinas and his scholastic predecessors and contemporaries.
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Gabriel Radle
Rev. John A. O'Brien Assistant Professor of Theology
Liturgical Studies |Liturgy, Late Antique and Medieval Christianity, Rites of Passage, Eastern Christian Liturgy and Monasticism |Gabriel Radle specializes in early and medieval Christian liturgy, with a particular focus on the Mediterranean world. His research contextualizes the historical practice of Christianity through the comparative reading of liturgical manuscripts across traditions and by engaging these sources with visual and material culture, hagiography, homiletic literature, and legal documents, both canonical and civil. His publications include studies on marriage rituals in East and West, including a monograph on late antique and Byzantine weddings (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), prayer books on Sinai, medieval rites of passage for children and adolescents, manuscripts of eucharistic texts, and the unique medieval religious history of Southern Italy. Radle has lectured internationally and held research fellowships at Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music, Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Regensburg (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow).
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Gabriel Reynolds
Jerome J. Crowley and Rosaleen G. Crowley Professor of Theology
World Religions and World Church, History of Christianity |Qur'anic Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations |Gabriel Said Reynolds did his doctoral work at Yale University in Islamic Studies. Currently he researches the Qur'ān and Muslim/Christian relations and is Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology in the Department of Theology at Notre Dame. He is the author of The Qur'ān and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge 2010) and The Emergence of Islam (Fortress, 2012), the translator of ʿAbd al-Jabbar’s Critique of Christian Origins (BYU 2008), and editor of The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context (Routledge 2008) and New Perspectives on the Qur'ān: The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context 2 (Routledge 2011). In 2012-13 Prof. Reynolds directed, along with Mehdi Azaiez, “The Qurʾān Seminar,” a year-long collaborative project dedicated to encouraging dialogue among scholars of the Qurʾān, the acts of which appeared as The Qurʾān Seminar Commentary (De Gruyter, 2016). In 2018 he published The Qurʾan and the Bible with Yale University Press and in 2020 Allah: God in the Qur'an, also with YUP. At Notre Dame he teaches courses on theology, Muslim/Christian Relations, and Islamic Origins. He runs a youtube channel, “Exploring the Qur’an and the Bible” that features conversations on scripture with leading scholars.
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Rebecca Ruvalcaba
Assistant Teaching Professor
|Latino/Hispanic Theology, Liberation Theology, Adult and Young -Adult Formation for the Church, Multicultural Theology |Rebecca "Becky" Ruvalcaba is currently the Director of Pastoral Formation in the Masters of Divinity Program. She comes to us after five years of service as the Assistant Director of Outreach at University of Notre Dame Campus Ministry. She currently holds a board member position with the not-for-profit Our Lady of the Road and a position with the Fort Wayne/South Bend Deacons Board. She is an Advisory Member for the Moreau Course Work Group. She also is on the parish council of St. Adalbert Parish. She received her Masters of Divinity degree from the University of Notre Dame in 2017. She born and raised in South Bend, In and has been married since 1996.
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Maura Ryan
John Cardinal O'Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Theology
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics | Health, development and human rights in Christian bioethics |Maura Ryan is the John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C. Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. Ryan's primary interests are in the areas of bioethics and health policy, women’s health and development, and Catholic Social Teaching. She is the editor of two volumes in social and medical ethics and her book Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction: The Cost of Longing was published by Georgetown University Press in 2001. Her articles have appeared in the Hastings Center Report, Theological Studies, The Journal of Philosophy and Medicine, Signs, The Journal of Catholic Social Thought and Environmental Health Perspectives. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Christian Ethics, the editorial boards of Religious Studies Review and Ethics and Behavior, the St. Joseph County Healthcare Advisory Consortium and the ethics committee for Hospice of St. Joseph County. Ryan served as Associate Provost at Notre Dame 2001-2004; Associate Dean for the Humanities and Faculty Affairs in the College of Arts and Letters 2008-2015; and currently serves as Vice President and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs.
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Mun'im Sirry
Associate Professor
World Religions and World Church | Qur'anic studies, interreligious relations | Mun’im Sirry is assistant professor of theology with additional responsibilities for the Contending Modernities research project. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School (2012). He did his undergrad and graduate studies at the International Islamic University in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Master’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His academic interest includes Qur’anic studies, interreligious relations, political theology, modern Islamic thought, and Southeast Asian religions and cultures. Along with Professor Gabriel Said Reynolds, he is the editor of journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Sirry is the author of Scriptural Polemics: The Qur’an and Other Religions (Oxford, 2014). He is now finishing up his monograph dealing with both traditional and critical scholarship on Islamic origins. He is also coordinating the Contending Modernities working group on Indonesia exploring and analyzing the complex relationships between various contending forces that have shaped, and been shaped by, religious life at both the societal and state levels. Sirry’s publications have appeared in journals such as Arabica, al-Bayan, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Interpretation, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Journal of Semitic Studies, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, The Muslim World, Studia Islamica, Die Welt des Islams.
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Alexis Torrance
Archbishop Demetrios Associate Professor of Byzantine Theology
History of Christianity | Greek Patristic, Byzantine, and Orthodox Theology, in particular Christology, ascetic thought, and theological anthropology. | Alexis Torrance received his undergraduate and graduate training in Theology at the University of Oxford. He has held research fellowships at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. He has been a member of the faculty at Notre Dame since 2014. His research interests gravitate around the fields of Greek Patristic, Byzantine, and Orthodox Theology, with a special focus on the areas of Christology, theological anthropology, ascetic thought, and East-West relations. He is currently developing a project on the nature and practice of theology in the middle and late Byzantine periods, with a view to bringing the findings into conversation with modern Orthodox thought. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2020, and is a Protopresbyter of the Ecumenical Throne.
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Todd Walatka
Director of Master of Divinity
Associate Teaching ProfessorSystematic Theology |Hans Urs von Balthasar; Latin American theology; the ecclesiology of Vatican II; Theology and Racism; Reception of Jewish thought in Catholic systematic theology |Todd Walatka grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Dayton. After an M.T.S. and Ph.D. from Notre Dame, he took up his current position as the Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies in Theology in 2011. Specializing in contemporary Catholic systematic theology, his research includes work on Hans Urs von Balthasar, Latin American liberation theology, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the interpretation and reception of Vatican II. He also works in the field of pedagogy and pedagogical formation, both in his role as Assistant Chair for Graduate Studies and in his research. His most recent courses taught include: Foundations of Theology; Introduction to Vatican II; Christian Traditions II; Mercy and Liberation; Fundamentals of Systematic Theology; Theology en español, Ecclesiology; Eschatology; and Teaching Theology. His two ongoing book projects explore 1) the history of Vatican II and 2) the theological witness of Archbishop Oscar Romero.
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Xueying Wang
Assistant Professor
World Religions and World Church | Catholicism in China, Confucianism, Mission History | Xueying Wang’s research focuses on Catholicism in China, especially the Chinese Rites Controversy (ca. 1630–1742). She pays special attention to the writings of Chinese Catholics, whose voices have traditionally been neglected. She has published articles on the work of Chinese Catholic intellectuals including Yan Mo, Zhang Xingyao and Xia Dachang who offer divergent perspectives on how their Confucian heritage can be harmonized with their newfound Catholic faith. Through careful examination of their writings, Prof. Wang explores theological topics such as ancestral sacrifices, sacrifices made in Confucian temples, and the translation of Catholic concepts into Chinese. She is currently writing a monograph tentatively titled: Chinese Literati on the Rites Controversy: A Comparative Theological Perspective.
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Joseph Wawrykow
Professor
History of Christianity | Medieval Christology; the late medieval and early modern reception of Aquinas's theology | Born and raised in Canada, Joseph Wawrykow did his doctoral work at Yale University and has taught at Notre Dame since graduation. He specializes in 13th-century Western theology, and has published on a wide range of central theological topics (Trinity; Christ; grace and predestination; sacraments; biblical interpretation) in high medieval theology. While he is best known for his work on the theology of Thomas Aquinas, his scholarly interests extend to other scholastic theologians, as well as to the varieties of medieval spiritual theology. In his research, he is attentive to issues of reception and transformation, showing the medieval scholastic theological achievement in its complex relations with the theologies of the early Fathers. Wawrykow has directed numerous doctoral dissertations, on such figures as William of Auxerre, Angela of Foligno, Duns Scotus, and, Aquinas. He has received University recognition for his teaching, both undergraduate and graduate, and has been entrusted with several leadership responsibilities by his Department, including lengthy stints as Director of Undergraduate Studies and as Director of Graduate Studies (Ph.D.) He is married to an art historian (Yale Ph.D.); their son did his undergraduate work at Yale and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Mathematics at the University of Michigan.
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Todd Whitmore
Associate Professor
Moral Theology/Christian Ethics, World Religions and World Church | Theology and Ethnography; Social theory; the Opioid Crisis | Professor Whitmore uses ethnographic methods to raise theological questions. From 2005-2013, this took him to war and post-conflict zones in northern Uganda and South Sudan, leading to his book, Imitating Christ in Magwi: An Anthropological Theology (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, December 2018). Anthropological theology turns traditional “theological anthropology” on its head, with the conviction that any account of “the person” must be richly informed by accounts of how persons in fact live. His work has led to him being appointed as Concurrent Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department. Currently Professor Whitmore’s work is local, where he serves as a Certified Addiction Peer Recovery Coach for persons with methamphetamine and opioid addictions in northern Indiana. His research asks how Christianity, race, and class work in the construction of public ideas of who counts as an addict. In doing “grounded” theology, Professor Whitmore believes that theologians should serve the marginalized by more than writing books. In Uganda in 2008, he co-founded, based on Catholic social teaching, a non-profit that combined agricultural training and peacebuilding. In 2018 he wrote a successful grant to train addiction recovery coaches to work in the local hospital emergency room to help those recovering from overdoses to maintain ongoing sobriety.
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Jeff Wickes
Associate Professor
History of Christianity, Liturgical Studies |Late Antique Christianity; Syriac literature; ritual studies; religion and literature |Jeff Wickes focuses on the interplay between Syriac literature, theology, and liturgy in the context of late antique Christianity. Building projects that work from close readings of Syriac texts, he gravitates in his work towards larger questions of genre (especially poetry), religion, and theology as they play out within the historical horizons of late antique Christianity, and as those horizons meet our own in the contemporary world. His first two books focused on Syriac Christianity’s formative voice, Ephrem the Syrian, and sought to find the place where performative context and exegesis met in the space of Ephrem’s poetry. His current book turns to a range of Syriac hagiographical poems sung between the fourth and sixth centuries to ask questions around form, agency, time, and gender in late antique poetry and the cult of the saints. He comes to Notre Dame after nine years at Saint Louis University. Prior to that, he completed a PhD at the University of Notre Dame, an MA at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary, and a BA at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. His work has been supported by grants from, among others, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, the Mellon Foundation, and the Dolores Zorhab Liebmann Fund.
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Abraham Winitzer
Jordan H. Kapson Associate Professor of Jewish Studies
Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity |Biblical Demythologization of Mesopotamian Myth: Conceptions of Myth In the Ancient World. Reception of Mesopotamian traditions in Judaism and Islam. The Spirit of Scholarship: Catholic Clergy at the Dawn of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, 1875-1965. Sumerian and Old Babylonian miscellaneous texts in the Yondorf Collection (with Walter Farber). | Winitzer teaches ancient Near East languages (primarily Akkadian, Aramaic, and Hebrew), but his interests deal more broadly with the intellectual and religious history of the ancient Near East and its reflection in the literature from this region. More particularly, it is the Akkadian literature from ancient Mesopotamia that forms the focus of his work, though a second major area involves Israel’s principal literary achievement, the Hebrew Bible, in its ancient Near Eastern context. His writings have centered on Akkadian divination, the subject of his 2017 book (Brill), along with contemporary Near Eastern historiography, the subject of his forthcoming volume on A. L. Oppenheim. He is presently turning to a project concerning and the reception of Mesopotamian mythic traditions in the Hebrew Bible.