Ryan Juskus, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of the Practice
Assistant Professor of the Practice
Ryan Juskus, Ph.D. joined the Institute for Social Concerns as assistant professor of the practice and faculty director of NDBridge in 2024. What drives Prof. Juskus’s teaching and research are concerns related to the social, religious, and moral dimensions of environmental and climate challenges. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Ryan held academic appointments at Princeton University’s High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton Theological Seminary, Wake Forest University, and Duke University. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Duke University, with a focus on Christian studies, religion in modernity, and environmental justice. Before pursuing graduate study, Prof. Juskus served for several years in affordable housing advocacy and development in Washington, DC, and then as the assistant director of the Human Needs and Global Resources Program at Wheaton College. In addition to these practical experiences in justice education and pursuing the common good, his work is also informed by decades of involvement with La Asociación Paz y Esperanza (Peace and Hope), an ecumenical peace and justice organization in the Americas that uses strategies of prevention, intervention, and reform to accompany vulnerable communities so that they might live free of violence and injustice. These formative experiences keep Prof. Juskus’s teaching and research grounded in communities of practice that seek to create a world where the most vulnerable can live and flourish in just societies and generous ecologies.
Prof. Juskus uses humanistic and social research methods to study the norms and strategies of religious environmental activists, primarily in the United States and Latin America. He also works constructively with these norms and strategies to address contemporary challenges related to environmental and climate injustices, energy transition, and environmental violence. His first major project was an ethnographic study of Christian activists in Central and Southern Appalachia who used citizen science in pursuit of environmental justice in places affected by the mining and burning of coal. Subsequent projects are focused on the lived theologies and ethics of environmental defenders on the front lines of climate change in Latin America and the role of Christian thought and practice in the long environmental justice movement from the seventeenth century to today. Prof. Juskus’s writing has appeared in academic journals, like Environmental Humanities and the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, as well as in public fora, like The Immanent Frame and ABC Religion & Ethics; he has also collaborated with student to publish Decarbonizing Character: Visions of Decarbonized Human Flourishing (Yellow Leaf Publishing, 2022). Prof. Juskus is currently preparing his first book manuscript, which is entitled Restoring Eden in Sacrifice Zones.
As part of the core faculty in the Institute for Social Concerns, Prof. Juskus teaches “Pursuing Justice and the Common Good” in the McNeill Fellows Program, the NDBridge course, and courses related to environmental justice, climate change and society, religious activists and social movements, and the ethics of energy transition.