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Together building a more just future

The Center for Social Concerns is an interdisciplinary institute responding to the complex demands of justice through a combination of justice education and research for the common good. We bring people together to think carefully about the world’s most pressing social concerns in order to develop creative and effective approaches to addressing them.

Justice Education

We cultivate moral imagination, practical wisdom, and the courage to act through a range of curricular and co-curricular programs for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

Research for the Common Good

We work with academics, advocates, and artists to study the world’s most pressing social concerns and develop creative and effective community-based approaches to addressing them.

Critical Conversations

We convene critical conversations that include diverse perspectives and foster innovative approaches to questions of justice from religious freedom to gun violence to racial health inequalities.

Center stories

Center launches new research lab to study mass incarceration

Students in the lab collaborate with faculty, activists, practitioners, and those affected by incarceration to design projects that will contribute to the overall body of scholarship on incarceration. It’s part of the Center for Social Concerns’ commitment to understand mass incarceration more fully.

Bringing art to youth in need of healing and self-discovery

Professor Neeta Verma’s research explores the use of design as a tool for social equity and justice. With support from the Center for Social Concerns, she ran weekly art workshops at DePaul Academy, a residential school for teenage boys within the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center.

Graduate Institute helps students develop their scholarly tools

The 2023 Graduate Institute for Engaged Teaching and Research brought together Notre Dame graduate students from 11 countries and a variety of academic fields to explore effective models of public scholarship and community engagement for addressing issues of justice.

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