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

A vocation of healing justice

Fr. Joachim Ozonze, a 2022–23 Graduate Justice Fellow, is discovering how inscriptions of violence on the human body can be rewritten through the radical power of kinship.

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students participate in reentry simulation

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

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Investing in the common good

Over winter break, the institute’s McNeill Winter Plunge took ten students from the Mendoza College of Business to Boston to explore first-hand what it means to lead with purpose. University photographer Matt Cashore captured photos of their experience.

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