THE INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL CONCERNS

The Institute for Social Concerns is the University of Notre Dame’s scholarly home for interdisciplinary responses to questions of justice. Committed to the normative proposition that a just world is a beautiful world, we engage the most urgent signs of the times through justice education, research for the common good, and collaborations with community.

JUSTICE
EDUCATION

Our approach to justice education develops students’ moral imagination, practical wisdom, and courage to act through academically rigorous coursework, immersive experiences, and critical reflection grounded in Catholic social tradition.

RESEARCH FOR
THE COMMON GOOD

Our approach to research focuses on the world’s most pressing social concerns and develops innovative, interdisciplinary, scholarly approaches to understand and address them.

COLLABORATIONS
WITH COMMUNITY

Our approach to community incubates democratic collaborations between community members and Notre Dame faculty, staff, and students that catalyze evidence-based sustainable interventions to local challenges.

INSTITUTE STORIES

Bretherton addresses democracy conference

The Regius Professor of Moral & Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, and author of numerous publications on Christianity and democracy—including Resurrecting Democracy and Christ and the Common Life—Luke Bretherton shared his theological vision for participatory democracy in the opening keynote of the Everyday Democracy conference planned and hosted by the institute on September 4–6.

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Kyla Walker brings poetry to the institute

As the international justice poetry fellow at the Institute for Social Concerns, Kyla Walker is practicing what she learned from her grandfather as a child—using her art to create understanding and connection across differences of language, culture, and geography.

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Ada Duru Ak presents her work at the RISE Hometown Symposium in the Geddes Hall Coffee House

RISE Hometown inspires incoming students

As Notre Dame’s 2,118 incoming first-year students were preparing to make the significant transition from the world they have known into the world of higher education, 63 of them prepared by exploring the complex demands of justice through the RISE program at the Institute for Social Concerns. These students were selected from a competitive pool of applicants to the program, which includes both a Hometown and a South Bend option.

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