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Past Research Themes

  1. A lone figure sits contemplatively on the floor of a sparse concrete setting. The large concrete wall curves overhead, and a stairway is visible in the background.

    2025-2026: Attention

    Whether the object be art, nature, scholarship, the suffering of others, or the Divine, centuries of thought can, and should, inform contemporary debates about the best ways to cultivate and direct our attention.

  2. Crowd at a train station

    2024-2025: The Public

    Considering "the public" as both a constituency and a concept, developing impactful models of publicly engaged scholarship, and interrogating and historicizing the very notion of "the public" itself.

  3. Blue-toned image of a hand with a futuristic, x-ray-like view of internal mechanics. Text overlay reads "Technology and the Common Good."

    2023-2024: Technology and the Common Good

    Research that evaluated the impact and ethics of technology in the past, present and future.

  4. Abstract image of a globe with connecting lines and orange-red lights, set against a dark, starry background. The title "The Connected World" appears above the image.

    2022-2023: The Connected World

    Fostering deeper analysis of the interconnectedness of social, cultural, political, and economic life around the globe.

  5. A crowd of students, faculty, and staff hold lit candles during a vigil on the University of Notre Dame campus at dusk. 2021-2022: A Time to Heal annual research theme image.

    2021-2022: A Time to Heal

    Facilitating scholarly engagement with the question of what it means to heal, and how healing occurs across individuals, cultures, geographies, and periods of time.

  6. Students walk across the sunlit quad in front of the Hesburgh Library clock tower on a fall afternoon at the University of Notre Dame. Golden leaves frame the scene.2020-2021: Race and Ethnicity in the United States annual research image.

    2020-2021: Race and Ethnicity in the United States

    Facilitating student and faculty engagement with questions raised by these events and the longer histories that inform them by sponsoring new scholarship that explored race and ethnicity in the United States.