Research advancing the common good

August 22, 2024

“I hope to collaborate with faculty on interdisciplinary research that advances the center’s mission and the Christian vision for a more just world.”

Suzanne Mulligan is one of four new scholars joining the Center for Social Concerns this fall. Mulligan is a moral theologian whose work engages the application of Catholic social doctrine to housing, gender-based violence, and human trafficking. She earned her Ph.D. in moral theology and a licentiate in sacred theology from St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland. She later joined the faculty at Maynooth, most recently serving as dean of postgraduate studies, a lecturer in moral theology, and editor of the Irish Theological Quarterly.

“I am looking forward to taking up my new post at the Center for Social Concerns. It gives me the opportunity to work in a dynamic, creative environment alongside colleagues from different academic disciplines who share a deep concern for social justice and the common good,” Mulligan said.

Mulligan, a professor of the practice, has a forthcoming book, Dwelling and Dignity, due out this winter. Amongst other things, she will co-direct the Catholic Social Tradition Minor with Professor Margie Pfeil.

Mulligan will be joined by Assistant Professor of the Practice Ryan Juskus, Senior Research Associate and formation expert Samantha Deane, and Practitioner in Residence (joint with the Initiative on Race and Resilience) and global human rights scholar Monalisa. Each brings expertise supporting the center’s strategic research priorities.

“We are overjoyed that Suzanne, Ryan, Sam, and Monalisa are joining the Center for Social Concerns. They will amplify our research portfolio and deepen our interdisciplinary connections with other scholars across campus and around the globe,” said Suzanne Shanahan, the Leo and Arlene Hawk Executive Director of the Center for Social Concerns.

Juskus researches and teaches at the intersection of ethics, faith, and environmental justice with a particular interest in the ways people make meaning of and act together to address environmental problems. He earned his Ph.D. from Duke University in interdisciplinary religious studies with an emphasis on Christianity, social ethics, and environmental justice in the Americas. He comes to Notre Dame from Princeton, where he was an environmental teaching fellow at the High Meadows Environmental Institute.

“I’m excited to join the Center for Social Concerns to translate our deepest values and commitments into teaching and research that helps us collectively inhabit more justly and generously what Pope Francis calls ‘our common home,’” Juskus said. He will play a leadership role in both the center’s NDBridge and McNeill Common Good Fellowship programs.

Deane brings to the Center for Social Concerns a wealth of student formation, research, and community engagement experience. As a senior research associate she will work to support faculty nationally with Virtues & Vocations, a national forum funded by the Kern Family Foundation for scholars and practitioners across disciplines to consider how to best cultivate character in pre-professional and professional education. She will also work with faculty across Notre Dame interested in questions of character and virtue.

Deane has a Ph.D. in cultural and educational policy studies from Loyola University Chicago. As a philosopher of education, her approach to teaching queries relations of becoming that sustain and enrich democratic life. Her scholarly work investigates gun violence, theories of agency, and the implications of gendered social norms for democratic educational practices. She comes to Notre Dame from Boston College, where she was director of the Formative Leadership Education Project.

“I’m thrilled to take up this role at the Center for Social Concerns and to continue catalyzing character education. The Virtues & Vocations forum creates a vital space to participate in the practice of aligning the content of our ethical commitments with the form of our educational institutions,” Deane said. “I’m looking forward to working with colleagues at Notre Dame and beyond who share my passion for integrating meaning and purpose into the academy.”

Monalisa returns to Notre Dame to the center this fall as a practitioner in residence in collaboration with the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience. She is an international lawyer with expertise in business and human rights, strategic litigation, negotiation, and advocacy in Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom. She earned her LL.B. from National Law University in Delhi, India, and her LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame.

As an LL.M. student, Monalisa was a regular participant at the monthly Labor Cafés hosted by the center’s Higgins Labor Program. She returned to the center in spring 2023 for a weeklong residency focused on human trafficking and has been a panelist at two center-sponsored conferences — a 2022 conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on promoting a just wage economy and a 2024 conference in Mumbai on Catholic social teaching and technology.

During her residency, Monalisa will work in the areas of race and child trafficking. “With my focus on child safety, I am looking forward to teaming up with in-house experts at the center and finding practical solutions to make the world the safe space it should be,” she said.

Mulligan, Juskus, Deane, and Monalisa are joining a community of scholars at the Center for Social Concerns that has expanded significantly in the past couple years with other new faculty, faculty fellows, and postdoctoral fellows doing research for the common good. These scholars — individually and through research collaborations — are tackling some of the most complex questions of justice today in the areas of climate, labor, mass incarceration, poverty, and technology. Visit the center’s people page to read more about them.