Perspectives: Amandhi Mathews | Institute for Social Concerns

YEAR IN REVIEW

PERSPECTIVES

Amandhi Mathews

2025–26 GRADUATE JUSTICE FELLOW

The Institute for Social Concerns is a home for justice research and education for scholars at any stage of their academic career, from undergraduate students to seasoned professors.

Jenifer Solano Becerra is a junior at Notre Dame, majoring in neuroscience and behavior with a minor in chemistry. Amandhi Mathews is a Ph.D. candidate in the Cody Smith Laboratory, studying neurodevelopment. Suzanne Mulligan joined the Institute last fall as professor of the practice and co-director of the Catholic social tradition minor. Jay Brandenberger ‘78 will retire this December after 36 years as professor of the practice and, most recently, director for assessment and engaged scholarship and director of academic community engagement at the Institute. Each reflects on how the Institute has played a crucial role in their scholarship and pursuit of justice and the common good.

As a young scientist in training, I struggled to find coherence between my faith and my daily work in the laboratory—until I spent a year as a Graduate Justice Fellow at the Institute for Social Concerns.

I see faith as a verb, a call to action and service as much as it is a deep reverence and trust. My research is in basic biology, which, while foundational, may never reach the clinic and serve patients in my lifetime. I wasn’t the one translating science discoveries into cures. I was generating the discoveries. This left a void in my sense of service and an incoherence for how my faith motivated my work, especially since I spent most of my time at work in this season of life.

This void started me on a years-long journey to bring my faith and science into conversation. I took courses in faith and science, attended conferences on science and religion, and explored sociological research on how beauty shapes motivation in scientific discovery. I knew that I loved being able to encounter the world under the microscope, but I just did not know why I loved it or that it alone would make life meaningful. But what I get to see and work with is truly beautiful: visually, in the fluorescent- tagged proteins marking neurons and glia in real time; and conceptually, in the elegant choreography of developmental biology. In experiencing this beauty of a world behind a microscope lens, I realized that I had a specific calling in how I encountered God’s creation and, in that, a very specific encounter with the Creator. This recognition transformed my science into a vocation. It was an intimate, daily encounter with God’s love made visible through the life I study. It is deserving of my time, focus, precision, and deliberation, and it is a privilege to translate this as scientific discovery.

Once something becomes a vocation, it naturally orients you toward the common good because you begin to recognize that you were created to see and serve the world in this particular way. As a basic biology researcher and through my formation with the Graduate Justice Fellowship at the Institute, I’ve come to understand that I, too, have a role in serving justice. Scientists often assume that unless they work directly on justice-related topics, they are outside those conversations. But serving justice isn’t confined to the subject of your research; it’s a disposition. It’s a way of showing up in the world.

In my day-to-day work as a graduate student, it’s easy to lose sight of purpose when I’m far from the people and communities my work is meant to serve. The Graduate Justice Fellowship brought me back to the world every week. While my science trains me as a scientist, the fellowship formed me as a scholar—one who seeks to serve the common good.