Notre Dame religion scholar Ebrahim Moosa will explore how using the arts and humanities in Islamic theological education might promote greater dialogue and scholarly diversity within Muslim communities and with other faith traditions.

Moosa, the Mirza Family Professor of Islamic Thought and Muslim Societies in Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, will work with two dozen Muslim theologians, artists and educators from Africa, North America and South Asia as part of the Pedagogies of Muslim Humanities project.

A product of traditional Islamic education himself, Moosa said he sees opportunities to address a gap in it. Many Islamic seminaries (both madrasas in the Sunni tradition and ḥawzas in the Shiʿa tradition) miss the opportunity to engage the humanities tradition produced by Muslim civilization, he said. Addressing that gap could help students cultivate traits such as curiosity, humility and openness to learning from other perspectives.

“Without these qualities, it is difficult for students to have meaningful, constructive conversations with people from different backgrounds,” Moosa said. “This project aims to revitalize the role of the arts and humanities in Islamic theological education to foster a culture of scholarly diversity and critical thinking, which is crucial for engaging with one’s own tradition as well as with people from other traditions.”

Key activities will include a 10-month virtual course on Islamic aesthetics, a 10-day residency at a museum of Islamic art and mentored community-based implementation where educators try out new curricula in their institutions. The project is supported by a three-year grant from the Templeton Religion Trust, which seeks to enrich the conversation about religion.

The project builds on Moosa’s earlier work as a religion scholar who is interested in revitalizing the intellectual culture of Muslim societies. In 2017, he launched the Madrasa Discourses project engaging recently graduated Muslim theologians from South Asia.

Madrasa Discourses created opportunities for traditional Muslim scholars to deepen their theological and scientific literacy. Many explored their faith tradition and its resources to grapple with the philosophical challenges posed by new scientific worldviews and technologies. The project has hosted three cohorts in three countries, reaching over 100 educators.

Moosa is a core-affiliated faculty member of the Keough School’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement With Religion, where he directs Contending Modernities, the global research and education initiative examining the interaction among Catholic, Muslim and other religious and secular forces in the world. He is also a faculty fellow of the Keough School's Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.

Originally published by Josh Stowe at ansari.nd.edu on October 16, 2026.

Human dignity and environmental sustainability are interconnected parts of a holistic vision that can help changemakers address global challenges as they work toward a more just and peaceful world, Cardinal Peter Turkson said during his recent visit to the University of Notre Dame.

Turkson, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Social Sciences and Sciences, visited campus October 4-6, beginning with a celebration of the Eucharist at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. He met with faculty, students and administrators in the University’s Keough School of Global Affairs to share his perspectives as a leading voice on Catholic social teaching, justice and integral human development.

“Integral human development makes an important point,” the Ghanaian prelate said during a visit to an undergraduate global affairs class, where he explained the need for a moral framework that centers the dignity of each person and the whole person. “Everything is interconnected, and everything is interdependent.”

Turkson underscored that message throughout his visit, analyzing global challenges including conflict, climate change and poverty alleviation through a people-centered approach inspired by Catholic social teaching and the integral ecology of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato si’. The encyclical emphasized care for creation in a world threatened by climate change and Turkson led the team that produced the first draft through the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace.

Sharing insights with students

Turkson talked with students during a visit to an ethical practice seminar taught by Rev. Emmanuel Katongole, professor of theology and peace studies and director of the Keough School’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion.

Students like Shea Kelly, a first-year global affairs major, appreciated the opportunity to meet with the cardinal.

“It’s great to interact with people who are making big contributions in their fields,” said Kelly, who asked Turkson for his perspective on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. “These are people we’re reading about as we try to understand ethical frameworks we can apply today. I’m a first-year student, so these new opportunities are really exciting to me.”

Drawing on his perspective of living in Ghana, a developing country, Turkson stressed the importance of subnational implementation efforts, hailing the work of the Bethany Land Institute, whose advisory board he sits on. The Uganda-based initiative, co-founded by Katongole, uses sustainable agriculture to address environmental and poverty issues. Turkson said such efforts, born of founders’ personal conviction, are often the most impactful change catalysts.

Johnny Jimenez, a junior global affairs major and peace studies minor, asked Turkson about the relationship between science and religion, which Turkson stressed were complementary. Jimenez found it helpful to hear the cardinal's insights.

“When you talk about global affairs, which is realistically how the world should be, it's super important to talk to the people whose whole life centers on that,” Jimenez said. “Getting to talk to them and hear their perspective is amazing.”

Addressing today’s global challenges

During his visit, Turkson also had a wide-ranging conversation with Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School, as part of the Dean’s Forum on Global Affairs, a series designed to bring world leaders into conversation with Notre Dame students, faculty and the broader community around current global issues.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical on the development of peoples, and a call to hear the cry of the poor. Decades after that landmark document, this year’s forum explores the future of the good life, seeking to address its focus in a modern context.

“I was struck by how much optimism there was in the document about the idea that development will bring peace,” Gallagher said. “And now we are 60 years on and we have lots more development around the world, but we do not yet have peace.

“So we’re coming together this year to talk about some fundamental questions: What does it mean for people and communities to flourish? What kind of world are we trying to build? And what responsibilities do we have to one another as we think about the future? These questions are very much in line with the Keough School’s mission of advancing integral human development. And I think today's conversation is a wonderful way to begin that exploration.”

Discussion explored underappreciated aspects of integral human development and how economies should look behind technocratic measures such as Gross Domestic Product to ensure they are actually serving the common good.

The conversation also explored how to think about artificial intelligence. Turkson advocated for good governance that would ensure AI supports human dignity rather than undermining it. “This is the balance we need to strive for,” he said. “We view this as a tool to advance our own human endowments and human qualities. But when the tool replaces what we are, then it becomes problematic,”

Conversation also unpacked Laudato si’s integral ecology, a holistic way of viewing humankind’s relationship with creation that moves beyond consumption and indifference and toward stewardship and solidarity, recognizing how humanity and nature are interconnected. Turkson shared anecdotes from his work promoting the message of the encyclical, noting that although government action for addressing climate change was mixed, integral ecology has received support from universities and multiple religious traditions. “We need to listen to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth,” he said. “The two come together.”

In addition, Turkson addressed universities’ roles in connecting faith and evidence in the search for knowledge, and in supporting young people as they prepare to start their careers and shape a more humane future. He cited the 19th-century theologian and writer John Henry Newman as an inspiration for how educators should approach their craft: “Speaking heart to heart has become a model for professors and teachers who seek to form young people.”

Turkson also encouraged students seeking to become changemakers to avoid self-imposed limits. He drew on his personal story, which began in a small Manganese mining town in Ghana, where he was one of 10 children born to a carpenter and vegetable vendor. Yet he did not let these humble roots define him. He pursued education and a vocation to the priesthood, learned multiple languages and became a leader in the Catholic Church who has worked on major global issues including climate change.

“When you make the effort, you can exceed what you consider to be limits, some of which are self-imposed and not real,” Turkson said. “And so my advice would be this, that students set aside these preliminary limitations that they sometimes put on their capacities and mental abilities, and be open to the idea that the God who made man in his image also endowed us with a great capacity closer to his own divine mind.”

An endowed gift to the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies from University of Notre Dame alumna Jaime Saul Hong ’99 and her husband Steve Hong, residents of Costa Mesa, California, will support a high-impact course this spring with an immersion component in South Korea.

The Hong Family Endowment for Excellence will give Notre Dame students a broad perspective on peace in the Korean Peninsula.

“South Korea is a country of increasing global attention and consequence. It is at the forefront of innovation from a corporate standpoint, as well as culture,” said Jaime. “With Steve’s family’s roots in Korea, it has been important for us to layer history into our daughters’ understanding of Korea. When we visit, we not only take them to family gatherings and to eat street food, but we have also taken them to the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone] and to museums to deepen their understanding of the history and complexities of North and South Korea.

“There are few places left in the world where just 45 minutes outside of a thriving city lies a heavily fortified border dividing an isolationist dictatorship from one of the world’s strongest democracies. There is so much to learn from studying this conflict and potential paths to resolution.”

Steve said their visits illuminated the importance of supporting immersive, global education: “Education is the foundation for success. This is why we were compelled to contribute to this educational opportunity for Notre Dame students.

“And now that we have young children [11-year-old Charlotte and 10-year-old Emmeline], we want to set a good example by showing them the importance of giving.”

Both Hongs have made their careers in business: Jaime, who majored in the Program of Liberal Studies at Notre Dame, is vice president of the national commercial team at Fidelity National Title. Steve, who earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Irvine, is the director for strategic relationships at AllianceBernstein.

The course, Peace in Korea, will be launched by Sharon Yoon, associate professor of Korean studies at the Keough School of Global Affairs and a Liu Institute core affiliated faculty member. Yoon, a sociologist who studies Korea and its diaspora, will lead the spring break trip, along with teaching assistant Paul Lee, a sociology and peace studies PhD student, who is writing his dissertation on families divided by the Korean War. The course is supported by the Liu Institute and Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“This is a rare opportunity for Notre Dame students to learn about Korea not just through reading assignments and classroom lectures but by actually going to the region, seeing the Demilitarized Zone for themselves, and talking to experts on the ground,” Yoon said. “Students will meet government officials, school teachers, North Korean defectors, and religious volunteers engaged in peace activism, while also engaging directly with Korean peers to envision new approaches to stability in Northeast Asia.

“I am deeply grateful to the Hong family for their generous support and enthusiasm for expanding experiential learning opportunities focused on Korea at the Keough School,” Yoon continued. “The spring immersion course will have a lasting influence on how our students understand and engage with Korea and Asia more broadly.”

Liu Institute Interim Director Kyle Jaros, an associate professor of global affairs at the Keough School, said the gift advances the institute’s growing strength and focus on Korea. “The Liu Institute has significantly expanded its expertise on Korea and Korean studies over recent years, beginning with the recruitment of Professor Yoon to Notre Dame in 2020 and continuing with the addition of several other Korea-focused faculty fellows in the time since,” he said.

“To see this expertise extend beyond the classroom is exciting and will be transformative for students. The Liu Institute is very grateful for this investment in education from Jaime and Steve Hong.”

The Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, part of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, promotes awareness, understanding and knowledge of Asia through administering a supplementary major and minor in Asian Studies, supporting student and faculty scholarship, organizing public events, and facilitating interaction and exchanges with partners in Asia. The institute was established in 2010 by a gift from the RM Liu Foundation that supports the philanthropic activities of Robert and Mimi Liu and their children, Emily and Justin, both Notre Dame graduates.

Originally published by Christine Cox at asia.nd.edu on October 05, 2026.

In Senegal, fewer than 1 percent of adults speak French as their first language. Yet this West African country, home to 39 living languages, has traditionally required students to learn in French from their first day of school.

The consequences are stark. Almost 70 percent of students can’t read a simple sentence by age 10, according to the World Bank, and by middle school, UNICEF finds that only 9 percent are reading at the minimum proficiency level.

Research has long shown that first-language-based bilingual education, which uses a student’s first language as the foundation for learning additional ones, yields better academic outcomes. But multiple government reform attempts to embrace the use of local languages had fallen short.

In recent years, that changed: A particularly effective pilot program by the Senegalese nongovernmental organization Associates in Research and Education for Development helped convince policymakers that bilingual education could be successfully implemented. The program demonstrated that a bilingual model with French and local languages not only improved math and reading scores in local languages, but also helped participants build stronger French language skills than their peers in French-only schools.

Now, policymakers are in the process of scaling bilingual education across Senegal. Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have studied how the country made that shift, and what it can teach policymakers about turning evidence into lasting educational reform. Their study traces how locally generated evidence helped overcome skepticism about bilingual education and create political momentum for change.

Published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the research offers lessons for countries working to improve the quality of educational outcomes in low-resource, linguistically diverse contexts.

“Globally, there is growing evidence that this approach to bilingual education improves learning outcomes, but it is rarely adopted or implemented at scale,” said lead author Erina Iwasaki, a postdoctoral research associate at the Pulte Institute for Global Development, part of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “This raises a crucial question: How can this policy become a political priority in more countries that would benefit from it? Our work provides answers.”

Reform that resonated

The researchers studied Senegal, which presents a compelling case study on how and why bilingual education was able to garner political support when most other similar contexts have failed to do so. For years, educators and policymakers had seen global evidence on this approach and knew, in theory, that it was a better option.

But two government-led attempts to teach students in national languages, from 1977 to 1984 and from 2002 to 2008, both struggled and were perceived as failures. The programs collapsed because of inadequate teaching materials, insufficiently trained teachers and parental skepticism, researchers found, undermining decision makers’ confidence that bilingual education could work in practice.

Then, from 2008 to 2019, Associates in Research and Education for Development partnered with the Senegalese government on a program that taught students bilingually across nine school districts, reaching more than 10,000 students. The program supported languages such as Wolof, spoken by approximately 80 percent of Senegal’s population, and Pulaar, the country’s second-most widely spoken language.

The organization deployed this program under the leadership of Executive Director Mamadou Amadou Ly, whose pioneering education work has gained global recognition. In 2025, Ly received the prestigious Yidan Prize for Education Development and Time magazine named him to its list of the 100 most influential people of 2026.

“When we began working with students, we encountered skepticism from certain government officials who had been educated in French,” Ly said. “They feared a backlash from parents, given past experiences. Some argued that neighboring countries — which had introduced national languages into their systems long before Senegal — did not, in their view, possess educational systems that outperformed Senegal’s.

“But one evaluation after another showed the same results: Students who learned in their own language performed better. The results vindicated our approach.”

Key findings from Senegal’s success

Researchers made several findings that are important for the broader field of multilingual education:

Difficulty implementing bilingual education reforms is a key barrier that prevents them from being politically prioritized. The efficacy of first-language-based bilingual education is now widely accepted in global policy circles, but in Senegal, repeated implementation issues had raised doubts about its feasibility.

Local evidence is key to making reform happen. Researchers found that effective, locally grounded proofs of concept functioned as a “causal hinge” between longtime advocacy for bilingual education and broader political prioritization. Researchers said the pilot addressed a reluctance to change the status quo by showing that bilingual education was not only theoretically preferable, but practically feasible.

Political advocacy, on its own, is not enough to effect change. Researchers found that the collective power of supporters — including the decades-long advocacy of scholars, civil society leaders and government officials, as well as the support of international partners — was necessary but not sufficient. International partners tended to play a secondary support role in the often contentious political debates around language of instruction, they said.

“Although policymakers pay attention to the global evidence, it is not the deciding factor in changing policy,” said study co-author TJ D’Agostino, associate professor of the practice in the Keough School and a core-affiliated faculty member of the school’s Pulte Institute. “International organizations played an essential role with funding and technical assistance but, in the end, it was local leaders like Mamadou Amadou Ly and local proofs of concept that made the difference.”

Informing multilingual education policy and practice

Senegal’s experience can help inform broader multilingual education reform, researchers said. The study is part of a larger Notre Dame research project led by D’Agostino, Language of Instruction Transition in Education Systems, that explores how education systems can successfully facilitate students’ transition from learning in a local language or bilingually to learning primarily in an international language. The study spans six countries: Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal and the Philippines.

Researchers recommended that national reform prioritize quality implementation alongside efforts to seize the political momentum to drive reforms forward. They noted that poor implementation can erode support and cause policy reversal — as happened in the Philippines, where rapid scale-up outpaced the quality of implementation.

In addition, they recommended that interventions make adjustments quickly to keep implementation on track.

“Our study underscores the benefits of implementation research, realist evaluation methods and design-thinking approaches,” D’Agostino said. "This can allow reformers to learn and fail fast and small rather than failing at scale."

Researchers also underscored the need for sustained support from the donor and policy communities.

“Our work shows that advocates need to build support for new policies across one or more local pilot programs before they can have real policy traction.”

“Our work shows that advocates need to build support for new policies across one or more local pilots before they can have real policy traction,” Iwasaki said. “This suggests a longer view of development and policy impact. We can't work on the five-year funding cycles that used to be the norm. We need to think across 20 to 30 years to really have something that can make systemic change.”

The study received funding from USAID and from the Notre Dame Poverty Initiative, which supports research partnerships with communities around the world to study poverty from every angle and help find what works to build lasting opportunity.

The research aligns with the broader work of D’Agostino, a fellow of the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute and the University’s Institute for Educational Initiatives. He studies how literacy interventions can improve educational outcomes and life opportunities in contexts that include sub-Saharan Africa as well as South Bend, Indiana.

D’Agostino’s work with Ly and Associates in Research and Education for Development has continued with support from the Poverty Initiative. He recently co-authored a study of the nongovernmental organization’s summer remedial learning program. This study’s lead author, Fernanda Soares, assistant research professor with the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child, part of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, recently presented results at Oxford University’s What Works Hub for Global Education.

Additional co-authors of the Senegal education reform study included several researchers affiliated with the Keough School’s Pulte Institute and linguistics experts from Senegal: Maria Teel, the late Moussa Daff, Mbarou Gassama Mbaye, Aliou Ngoné Seck and Fary Silate Ka.

What is the role of religion in Afghanistan? Should a future state have an official religion? How — or should — the international community engage with the Taliban, or does doing so confer legitimacy on a repressive regime?

These questions were at the heart of a recent convening hosted by the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development, part of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

Hosted by Notre Dame Rome, the gathering brought together 20 women from the Afghan diaspora to wrestle with a variety of issues and imagine a peaceful and pluralistic future. The convening, which was organized to elevate women's voices, united this diverse group around a singular task: contributing to a larger vision for a just, inclusive and peaceful Afghanistan. It is part of a larger effort by the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development to promote ongoing dialogue in an effort to build that future.

“Hope was a difficult word for me to say,” one participant said, reflecting a sentiment shared by other participants amid ongoing uncertainty over Afghanistan’s future. But hope animated the conversations that unfolded over several days.

Discussion explored core themes that included the role of religion and the importance of inclusion. Participants grappled with how to ensure meaningful representation across ethnic, gender, socioeconomic and regional lines, and called for the inclusion of people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people and rural communities.

A central question was whether religious pluralism remains viable when some conservative interpretations of Islam disenfranchise vulnerable groups, including women. Participants recognized that religion would likely be part of Afghanistan’s future governance, thus making the work of reimagining its role even more important.

Conversation also focused on international engagement with the Taliban. Participants expressed concern that even minimal diplomatic contact by European and regional powers risks conferring tacit approval on an oppressive regime. This was in tension with another concern: finding leverage to demand that the regime uphold basic human rights.

Navigating this dilemma was further complicated by the reality articulated by an attending diplomat: There is no appetite globally or domestically for armed resistance. This dynamic has led the Afghan diaspora to seek accountability without relying on it.

Following virtual solidarity exchanges with veteran activists from Indonesia, Gaza, Syria, Myanmar and Northern Ireland, the focus shifted from vision to action. Drawing on insights from these contexts, participants formally committed to continuing their work together as they support building a diverse coalition to help shape Afghanistan’s future.

The Rome gathering is part of the broader Dialogue and Visioning Process organized by the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development. The process brings together multiple constituencies, including scholars, human rights experts, political leaders, economists and activists.

The program has tasked each cohort with drafting a vision document of shared principles for the country's future. Earlier contributions had highlighted the need to elevate women’s voices as part of the conversation.

“Afghan women particularly from marginalized minorities bear the weight of the crisis like no other group,” said Aref Dostyar, program director for the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development. “That’s why we built a dedicated space for women to facilitate internal dialogues. Their conversations will ripple outward and enrich the ongoing discussions we continue to support.”

Related story

New partnership aims to support Afghan women’s access to higher education

After nearly a decade of decline, support for democracy is rising across nearly every country surveyed in the 2026 AmericasBarometer. But at a Washington, D.C., forum marking the release of the latest findings, researchers and policy experts explored a more complicated set of questions: What is driving the change? What do people mean when they say they support democracy? And what will it take to sustain that support?

The Sept. 9 event, hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, the school’s Kellogg Institute, Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy and the Inter-American Dialogue, convened researchers and policy experts to examine the new findings and their implications for democratic resilience, governance and public policy. The event took place at the Keough School Washington Office.

Mariana Rodríguez Vargas, director of research and engagement at Vanderbilt’s Center for Global Democracy, highlighted the report’s key findings. About 65% of adults in Latin America now say democracy is preferable to any other form of government, a six-percentage-point increase since 2023. Support increased in nearly every country surveyed and across age and education groups.

For Oliver Stuenkel, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the findings also have significance beyond Latin America.

“Defending democracy is never-ending,” Stuenkel said, emphasizing the importance of understanding how democratic attitudes are changing at a time when democratic norms and institutions are under attack globally.

The discussion moved beyond the headline number to consider what might be behind the increase, and whether it can last.

Better conditions, stronger support

The report’s findings suggest that when people’s daily quality of life improves — greater economic and food security as well as less insecurity— this may positively influence their support for democracy. In most countries, fewer people reported that their national economy had worsened over the previous year. Perceptions of neighborhood safety also continued to improve, while crime victimization declined more modestly.

Noam Lupu, director of Vanderbilt’s Center for Global Democracy, highlighted the importance of that connection in understanding the new results. The increase in support is encouraging, he said, but researchers will need to see whether the trend continues as economic and security conditions change.

The conversation also explored governance. While some conditions have improved, low satisfaction with government performance and concerns about corruption remain important factors that shape how people view their political systems and ultimately threaten to undermine support for democracy.

What does “democracy” mean?

During panels, speakers explored what people actually mean when they say they support democracy.

Abby Córdova, associate professor of global affairs at the Keough School and a contributor to the report, noted that support for elections does not necessarily translate into support for the broader liberal democratic system, including checks and balances, civil liberties and limits on executive power.

She discussed new measures in the 2026 AmericasBarometer examining support for illiberal authoritarianism — a view of democracy centered on elections in which elected leaders are seen as having broad authority to govern as they see fit. Her work on the subject is part of a larger research project co-authored with political scientist Gessica de Freitas.

Rebecca Bill Chavez, president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue, raised a related question in discussing security. El Salvador’s experience, she noted, illustrates the appeal of governments that promise dramatic improvements in public safety while also raising questions about the tradeoffs for democratic institutions.

Together, those perspectives added an important dimension to the report’s headline finding. Rising support for democracy matters, but the nature of that support matters too, particularly as citizens weigh democratic principles against their expectations for security, effective government and economic well-being.

The report’s findings also informed discussions with U.S. policymakers. Following the forum, Abby Córdova and Mariana Rodríguez Vargas presented highlights from the AmericasBarometer research on Capitol Hill, meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and offices of Members of Congress from the Indiana and Tennessee delegations. They discussed the implications of the findings for U.S. foreign policy and answered questions about the research.

Security and a changing region

Those questions took on a broader regional and international dimension during a fireside conversation with Juan Cruz, senior adviser with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cruz pointed to security as a central concern shaping public attitudes across the region and discussed the appeal of governments that promise quick solutions to persistent problems. The conversation also touched on the role of the United States, China’s growing presence in Latin America and the ways countries in the region are responding to changing global dynamics.

“Security is the dominant concern for people across the region, and that shapes how they think about democracy and what they expect from their governments,” Cruz said.

Learn More

Read the 2026 Pulse of Democracy report and explore the AmericasBarometer data and resources.

In recognition of this milestone challenge, this year’s Keough School of Global Affairs' Dean’s Forum on Global Affairs will explore the theme “The Future of the Good Life” through a year-long series of public conversations. Themes will include integral ecology, the future of foreign aid, and the risks of geopolitical rivalry.

The series features leaders whose work reflects the Keough School’s mission of advancing human flourishing through research, teaching and real-world engagement.

“The Dean’s Forum brings global leaders involved in some of the most consequential issues we face, across a range of global challenges,” said Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs. “It’s an opportunity for our community to learn directly from leaders applying their experience to global challenges.”

The series will open Oct. 5 with Cardinal Peter Turkson, chancellor of the Pontifical Academies of Social Sciences and Sciences and a leading voice on Catholic social teaching, justice and integral human development.

Turkson will join Gallagher for “Catholic Leadership, Integral Ecology, and the Call of Laudato Si’” from 3 to 4 p.m. Oct. 5 in the Smith Ballroom at the Morris Inn. Their conversation will explore Catholic leadership, integral human development and the role of faith, scholarship and research in advancing justice and peace. They will discuss the enduring call of Laudato Si’, the interconnected challenges facing the world and the opportunities for Catholic institutions to advance knowledge and action for the common good.

Turkson was a key figure in the drafting of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. He is president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and previously served as the first prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He also served as coordinator of the Vatican’s COVID-19 Commission.

Turkson will remain at Notre Dame on Oct. 6 for a book launch and discussion of Integral Ecology in the Anthropocene: Africa and Beyond. The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Hesburgh Center Auditorium, with lunch following in the Jenkins Nanovic Forum. Registration is required.

The events are in partnership with the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion.

On Oct. 29, the forum will turn to one of the most consequential relationships in global affairs. Gallagher will join Sarah Beran, incoming president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service, for “Competing, Not Colliding: Steering U.S.-China Relations in an Era of Rivalry.” The event will take place at the Hesburgh Auditorium.

Beran brings extensive experience in U.S.-China relations and bilateral negotiations. She previously served as senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the White House National Security Council and as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Drawing on her experience at the highest levels of U.S. foreign policy, Beran will discuss the challenges of managing strategic competition between Washington and Beijing while maintaining communication and avoiding escalation.

Additional Dean’s Forum speakers include:

• Amy McAuliffe, visiting distinguished professor of the practice in the Keough School and Peter Quaranto, visiting professor of the practice, Nov. 12

• Rachel Glennerster, president of the Center for Global Development and Sean L. Callahan, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, Feb. 23, 2027

The Dean’s Forum underscores the Keough School’s role as a bridge between scholarship and policy. Through its Washington, D.C., office and ongoing policy engagement, the school connects faculty and students with policymakers and practitioners, fostering dialogue that informs research and translates ideas into action.

“Our students don’t just want to study global affairs in the abstract,” Gallagher said. “They want to understand how choices are made, what values guide them, and what it means to lead responsibly. Engaging with policymakers and global leaders gives them that perspective.”

Events are free and open to the public. More information about the Dean’s Forum on Global Affairs can be found on the Keough School’s news and events page.

The paper, published in Discover Agriculture, stems from a project conducted in collaboration with Catholic Relief Services through the Keough School’s i-Lab, a hands-on experience in which MGA students work in teams with global partners to develop practical solutions to real-world challenges.

The original project brought together four master of global affairs students to examine water-smart agriculture training in Guatemala’s Dry Corridor alongside Catholic Relief Services and its local partner, Caritas. Aidé Cuenca Narváez and Alix Underwood served as co-research leads, collaborating on the research design, data collection and analysis.

After the i-Lab concluded, they continued working with the data alongside Tracy Kijewski-Correa, the Frank M. Freimann professor of structural engineering and hazard resilience and the William J. Pulte director of the Keough School's Pulte Institute for Global Development, developing the research into the published paper. Festus O. Amadu, a former postdoc at the Keough School and a current professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, also contributed to the paper.

“The team of four i-Lab students designed an outstanding data collection platform for this project,” Kijewski-Correa said. “To now see two of those early-career researchers continue to derive evidence from that data and share it in the peer-reviewed literature demonstrates the power of the i-Lab for our students, our partners and now the scholarly community.”

The study focused on Guatemala’s Dry Corridor where farmers face challenges including drought, excessive rainfall and food insecurity. The research examined four water-smart agricultural practices promoted through Catholic Relief Services’ farmer field schools: permanent mulching, responsible nutrient management, integrated armyworm management and visual soil evaluation.

Researchers analyzed survey data from 507 households across 12 communities in Guatemala’s Chiquimula and Baja Verapaz departments. The surveys were conducted in 2022 with participants in two Catholic Relief Services programs, Restorative Agriculture in Communities for Economic Sustainability and Restoring Nutrition and Food Security in Communities of the East and North of Guatemala.

The study examined whether farmers retained knowledge of the agricultural practices six months to a year after participating in farmer field schools. The researchers found that perceived resource constraints were associated with lower knowledge retention for three of the four practices studied. The exception was responsible nutrient management, for which resource constraint was positively associated with knowledge retention.

Knowledge retention also varied across practices. Permanent mulching, which the researchers classified as having the lowest cognitive load, had the highest average retention. Integrated armyworm management and visual soil evaluation, which were classified as having higher cognitive loads because of their complexity, novelty or Spanish-language literacy demands, had lower levels of retention.

The researchers also found that education was positively associated with knowledge retention, with the relationship becoming stronger as the cognitive load of the practice increased.

For Cuenca Narváez and Underwood, however, the research was about more than analyzing data.

“What motivated our team was the fact that the survey participants donated not just their time, but also their expertise and knowledge,” Cuenca Narváez said. “We believed there was more we could do with the data to share Guatemala’s experience with this project.”

Underwood said the experience of conducting research in partnership with  the communities involved reinforced the responsibility researchers have to make meaningful use of the information participants share.

“We were really motivated to do something more with the data,” she said. “We felt that responsibility to make something come of it, to analyze our findings more closely and share it with a broader audience.”

The findings have implications for the design of agricultural extension programs in resource-constrained communities. The researchers argue that programs may need to bundle training with interventions that help offset resource constraints long enough for practices to take hold. They also recommend greater use of visual communication, instruction in local languages and approaches that connect new agricultural practices with farmers’ existing knowledge and practices.

“There is clear evidence that climate-smart agriculture can help smallholder farmers keep pace with escalating climate shocks, but this work highlights the importance of harmonizing these interventions with the practices and norms of the communities they serve,” Kijewski-Correa said.

The initiative is led by Paul Winters, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Notre Dame and executive director of AIM for Scale.  AIM for Scale is a global initiative that has previously received support from the International Affairs Office of the UAE Presidential Court and the Gates Foundation.

The funding is part of a broader $60 million investment from the OpenAI Foundation that brings together AIM for Scale; the University of Chicago; the University of California, Berkeley; Precision Development; Digital Green and CIMMYT. Together, the organizations aim to expand access to AI-powered weather and crop disease forecasting tools for 100 million smallholder farmers over the next three years.

For Winters, the funding represents an opportunity to tackle a challenge that has long confronted the development community: how to move evidence-based innovations beyond successful pilots and into sustainable initiatives capable of reaching millions of people.

“Artificial intelligence is creating extraordinary new possibilities for farmers, but innovation alone is not enough,” Winters said. “The real challenge is ensuring that these tools become part of systems that can sustainably reach millions of farmers based in low- and middle-income countries. This funding gives us an opportunity to work with governments to translate rapid advances in AI into services that farmers can rely on year after year.”

Taking AI-powered forecasts to scale

Smallholder farmers grow approximately one-third of the world’s food, yet many lack access to timely, localized information to guide critical decisions about planting, harvesting and protecting their crops. Dry spells, storms and disease outbreaks can threaten an entire season’s production and the livelihoods that depend on it.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence are creating new possibilities for closing this information gap. AI weather models can produce reliable, localized forecasts using substantially less computing power than traditional forecasting systems. AI can also help deliver forecasts and related advice to farmers through text messages, calls, chatbots and other channels.

Research suggests that access to timely forecasts can influence farmers’ decisions about what and when to plant and how much to invest, with the potential to increase incomes and reduce crop losses.

But developing better technology is only part of the challenge.

AIM for Scale will use the OpenAI Foundation funding to help governments move AI-powered weather services from promising pilots to sustainable delivery at national scale. Working with governments, multilateral development banks, academia and implementing partners, AIM for Scale will help connect these innovations with the partnerships, technical assistance and large-scale financing needed to reach millions of farmers.

This work will draw on the complementary expertise of organizations across the broader partnership. The University of Chicago and UC Berkeley will support national meteorological agencies in tailoring and operationalizing AI weather models. Precision Development will work with governments and civil society organizations to turn forecasts into practical advice and deliver it through trusted channels. Digital Green will integrate improved forecasts into FarmerChat, its AI agricultural advisory platform, while using farmer feedback to inform forecasting teams.

A portion of AIM for Scale’s $10 million grant will be awarded through a sub-grant to CIMMYT to advance AI-enabled crop disease forecasting. CIMMYT will strengthen its wheat pathogen forecasting capabilities, using AI and NASA Earth observation data to identify potential outbreaks earlier.

After more than a decade of erosion, support for democracy has stopped falling and begun a modest but widespread recovery across the Americas.

The findings are detailed in the 2026 Pulse of Democracy, released today by the Kellogg Institute, part of the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, and by Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy.

The 2026 AmericasBarometer includes 25,282 interviews across 21 nationally representative surveys in countries across the Americas. The survey examines how citizens perceive and experience democracy and governance, including their views on democratic legitimacy, trust in institutions, corruption, citizen security, migration, political participation and government performance. This year’s study again includes the United States and Canada alongside Latin America and, for the first time, Cuba.

The report finds that support for democracy increased across nearly every country surveyed between 2023 and 2026, marking the first broad regional upturn in a generation. Although citizens across much of the region report improvements in economic and physical security, they remain far less convinced that governments are honest, capable and responsive to their needs, highlighting the need to strengthen trust in government and accountability.

“The findings offer some encouraging signs, but they also underscore the work that remains,” said Ann Mische, acting director of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute and associate professor of sociology and peace studies at the University. “Improving people’s daily lives matters, but strengthening democracy also requires institutions that people trust.”

The report’s key findings

About two-thirds of Latin Americans express support for democracy in 2026, up 6 percentage points from 2023, according to the report. Support increased in nearly every country and across age groups and educational levels rather than being driven by any single demographic group. Substantial differences remain across countries, however, and the recovery follows nearly a decade of comparatively low democratic support.

In most countries, fewer people say their national economy has worsened compared with 2023, and household food insecurity has declined from its pandemic-era peak. Still, roughly one in four people across the region report experiencing food insecurity, and improvements are unevenly distributed.

The share of people who feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods has been declining steadily for nearly a decade and fell again in 2026. Crime victimization has declined only modestly, however, and substantial differences in experiences with crime remain across countries.

Citizens with greater economic security, less food insecurity, lower exposure to crime, and fewer experiences with corruption express higher support for democracy. On average, several of these conditions improved across the region between 2023 and 2026, coinciding with the broader increase in democratic support.

“The modest recovery in support for democracy is real and encouraging, but it is also fragile,” said Noam Lupu, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science. “People are reporting improvements in their economic and physical security, but they still want governments that are honest, capable and responsive.”

Better economic conditions and lower crime rates boost support for democracy. But government failures weaken support.

Citizens who experience greater economic and food security and less crime and corruption express higher support for democracy. But government failures undercut democratic support.

Despite this progress, everyday corruption has changed little, satisfaction with local public services remains low and citizens’ evaluations of political leaders vary widely. The findings suggest that improvements in material conditions can bolster democratic goodwill, but persistent failures of governance and representation continue to hold it back.

The share of adults reporting an intention to emigrate fell from 31 percent in 2023 to 25 percent in 2026, returning roughly to pre-pandemic levels. Improving conditions in countries of origin coincide with the decline, while migration pressures remain substantial and vary considerably across countries.

New data and expanded public resources

Alongside the Pulse of Democracy, Vanderbilt’s Center for Global Democracy and LAPOP Lab released the 2026 AmericasBarometer data and updated Data Playground, along with questionnaires, technical documentation and other resources, free of charge.

About the AmericasBarometer

The AmericasBarometer is the flagship survey project of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy and its LAPOP Lab, a global leader in comparative public opinion research. Since 2004, it has collected more than 433,000 interviews across 35 countries, creating an extensive comparative record of how citizens across the hemisphere perceive and experience democracy and governance. The surveys use nationally representative samples of voting-age adults and cover topics including democratic legitimacy, trust in institutions, corruption, citizen security, migration, political participation and government performance. In 2025, Vanderbilt partnered with the Kellogg Institute to launch the 2025-26 report.

About the Kellogg Institute

The Kellogg Institute, part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, is a leading center for interdisciplinary research dedicated to understanding, strengthening and renewing democracy worldwide.

About Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy

The Center for Global Democracy is Vanderbilt University’s leading social science institute dedicated to research and innovation in democratic politics. Its research examines how citizens perceive, experience and support democracy across countries and over time. Its research portfolio includes the LAPOP Lab, a global leader in international survey research and home to the AmericasBarometer.

Media contacts

Vanderbilt University
Julia Jordan
Media Relations Manager
media@vanderbilt.edu
615-322-6397

University of Notre Dame
Tracy DeStazio
tdestazi@nd.edu
269-769-8804

“The work of our newest colleagues — and the critical questions they address — is more vital than ever,” said Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School. “From the study of moral psychology and transitional justice to the imperatives of sustainable enterprise and international law, these experts embody the Keough School’s commitment to connecting rigorous scholarship and real-world impact. They bring diverse perspectives that will not only advance our research but will also challenge our students to think critically and creatively about how to apply their own knowledge, values and skills to the most pressing challenges of our time.”

New faculty include:

Rory Finnin
Notre Dame Collegiate Mission Chair in Ukrainian Studies
Director, Nanovic Institute for European Studies’ Ukrainian Studies Hub

Finnin was most recently a visiting professor of Ukrainian studies in the Keough School's Nanovic Institute for European Studies. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, he was professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge, where he established the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies program in 2008.

Finnin has curated and organized more than 40 exhibitions and cultural events, advancing public understanding of Ukraine’s language, history and society in the U.K. and beyond. His research focuses on the interplay between culture and identity in Ukraine, with particular attention to Crimea and Crimean Tatar literature, and his broader interests include nationalism studies, solidarity studies and cultural memory in the Black Sea region. He holds a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and comparative literature from Columbia University. He is also a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Ukraine from 1995 to 1997. He is also a core-affiliated faculty member of the Nanovic Institute.

Rev. James Lies, C.S.C.
Teaching Professor

Fr. Lies, C.S.C., joins the Keough School faculty after serving as senior advisor for faculty fellow affairs and partnerships at the Keough School’s Nanovic Institute for European Studies. A priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and a developmental and moral psychologist, Lies teaches and writes about the human dimensions of diplomacy, leadership, conflict, moral judgment and ethical decision-making. His teaching connects psychological theory and research with the practical and ethical challenges of global affairs, examining how identity, culture and perception shape decision-making, conflict and leadership.

Lies holds a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota, a Master of Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the University of Notre Dame. He is also a core-affiliated faculty member of the Nanovic Institute.

Emma Murphy
Assistant Professor of Modern Ireland and Peace Studies

Murphy most recently held a postdoctoral position with the Clingen Family Center for the Study of Modern Ireland in the Keough School's Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and the Peace Accords Matrix at the school's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. As part of this work she supported the Legacy Project, which preserves and engages the digital archive of the Colombian Truth Commission, and explored the lessons the Colombian peace process holds for Ireland. More broadly, Murphy’s research focuses on transitional justice; the politics of divided societies; identity in post-conflict societies; Irish politics and feminist and postmodern political theory. She holds a doctorate in politics and international relations from University College Dublin, where she was an Irish Research Council Laureate Award-affiliated fellow. She is also a core-affiliated faculty member of the Keough-Naughton Institute.

Tom Reynolds
Adjunct Professor of the Practice

Reynolds teaches courses that prepare students to examine how organizations integrate sustainability into business strategy, operations and global supply chains. He also supports the McKenna Center's Urban Poverty and Business Initiative, particularly the South Bend Entrepreneurship and Adversity Program, where he works with students and entrepreneurs to foster entrepreneurship and expand economic opportunity. Reynolds’ professional experience spans global supply chain management, manufacturing and operations, executive consulting and organizational transformation. He came to Notre Dame through the Inspired Leadership Initiative following senior leadership roles in global consulting and industry. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a master of business administration in finance and international business from New York University. He is also a core-affiliated faculty member of the McKenna Center.

Lia Brazil
Assistant Professor of Modern Ireland

Brazil will join the Keough School in January 2027 from the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute where she is a Leverhulme Trust research fellow. She was previously a National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Fellow at the Keough Naughton Institute and a postdoctoral research fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She received her doctorate in history from the European University Institute, Florence. Brazil’s research centres on the history of humanitarianism, international law and human rights. She is interested in how history has informed the challenges facing NGOs today, the role of individuals under international law, and comparative and global perspectives on modern Ireland. At the Keough School she will begin a new project on human rights and modern Ireland.

Frank Macchiarola, visiting professor of practice, is a senior energy policy and government affairs leader specializing in clean energy and energy policy. He is the chief advocacy officer of American Clean Power, where he leads government affairs and political engagement at the federal and state levels. He previously held senior leadership roles at the American Petroleum Institute and America’s Natural Gas Alliance and served as staff director of the U.S. Senate committees on Energy and Natural Resources and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Daniele Nyirandutiye, visiting professor of practice, is a global strategist and senior policy practitioner specializing in U.S. foreign policy, development finance, investment and Africa. She has served at the White House National Security Council and as a U.S. diplomat with USAID, including as USAID mission director in Uganda. She brings experience working across government, the private sector and civil society to advance development, governance and inclusive economic growth in frontier markets.

David Shullman, visiting professor of practice, is a national security and China policy expert with extensive experience in U.S. intelligence, foreign policy and strategic analysis. He recently served as the national intelligence officer for China on the National Intelligence Council, where he was the principal advisor on China to senior U.S. policymakers. He previously served in senior roles at the Atlantic Council, the International Republican Institute and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Macchiarola, Nyirandutiye and Shullman are joining current visiting professors of the practice Amy McAuliffe and Peter Quaranto.

The University of Notre Dame’s Peace Accords Matrix is expanding its work to Africa’s Great Lakes region, seeking to contribute to the peace process between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda by providing expertise on peacemaking and peacebuilding that will support the work of local stakeholders.

The move extends the global footprint of the Peace Accords Matrix, part of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. The Peace Accords Matrix provides decision-makers and frontline practitioners with evidence to support the implementation of peace agreements. Its ongoing work includes monitoring implementation of agreements in Colombia and the Philippines.

“We know that agreements succeed or fail during the challenging implementation phase, when political leaders and peace practitioners must juggle competing demands,” said Josefina Echavarría Álvarez, professor of the practice and director of the Peace Accords Matrix. “Strengthening this peace process will be key for the entire Great Lakes region to move beyond cycles of humanitarian crises, protect human rights and support African-led diplomacy.”

Supporting the regional peace process

Decades of conflict and instability in eastern DRC have displaced more than 7 million people, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Renewed violence since 2022 has heightened tensions across the Great Lakes region, a highly populated area in East Africa centered around a chain of lakes that includes Lake Victoria.

The DRC and Rwanda signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in June 2025, and in December the two countries formally established the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity. But implementation has proven difficult amid disputes over the sequencing and verification of commitments, and fighting has continued in eastern DRC.

So far, civil society groups have been chronically underengaged in the implementation process, said Carolina Serrano Idrovo, assistant director of research and grant operations for the Peace Accords Matrix. That risks creating a top-down process that lacks broader societal input and, ultimately, sustainability.

Amid those challenges, the Peace Accords Matrix is identifying civil society organizations to consult as it builds a stakeholder map of the peace and conflict landscape in the Great Lakes region.

“Our work is really about understanding the context as much as we can, mapping the landscape and building trust with key actors so that we can serve as a helpful resource for those at the negotiating table and those in civil society who want to participate more fully,” Serrano said.

The Peace Accords Matrix has engaged Emmanuel Habuka Bombande, a Ghana-based peacebuilder with decades of experience, to help coordinate this work.

Bombande, who co-founded the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, has served as a senior mediation adviser to the United Nations, including with the U.N. mission in the Central African Republic, and previously worked with the Keough School’s Kroc Institute as a fellow. Along with Melinda Davis, a research associate with the Peace Accords Matrix, he is identifying key groups for the Peace Accords Matrix to consult with and planning workshops that will begin in fall 2026.

The resulting stakeholder map, grounded in social network analysis, will expand civil society groups’ understanding of their role in the peace process and identify opportunities to participate in it, addressing a key gap in the fragile implementation process, Serrano said.

“In every context in which we work, we prioritize relationships with local stakeholders,” Serrano said. “They play a critical role in shaping and sharing our analysis.”

Extending a proven model

The latest initiative expands the larger work of the Peace Accords Matrix, which maintains the largest collection of implementation data on intrastate peace agreements and is now active on three continents.

In Colombia, the Peace Accords Matrix is responsible for verification and monitoring of the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement — the first time a university-based research center has directly supported implementation of a peace accord, and the first time researchers have measured one in real time. In the Philippines, it works with Catholic Relief Services-Philippines to track progress on the 2014 Mindanao agreement.

In Africa’s Great Lakes region, the role of the Peace Accords Matrix will continue to evolve as the team builds relationships, Serrano said, adding that the opportunity to work on a new continent reflects the versatility of the Peace Accords Matrix and its capacity to adapt to the needs of local partners.

“It’s not about arriving with answers,” Serrano said. “It’s about listening to the local context so that we can be of service in a way that’s meaningful and supports a sustainable peace.”

The work in the Great Lakes region is supported by a grant from the Vitol Foundation, an independent, Swiss-registered foundation that invests in organizations that strengthen the resilience of the most overlooked communities.

Learn more and contact

To learn more about the Peace Accords Matrix, please visit its website. To contact the program, please email peaceaccords@nd.edu.

This fall, the Keough School of Global Affairs welcomes a diverse group of undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students to campus — young leaders who are dedicated to working on global policy issues that impact human dignity and flourishing worldwide. More than 120 students, including over 70 undergraduates and over 50 graduate students, are joining the school.

“In a world confronting profound challenges — from climate change and conflict to threats to human rights and democracy — our students bring vital courage, expertise and vision to the Notre Dame community,” said Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School. “Their lived experiences and commitment to the common good are sure to inspire all of us to think bigger and act with purpose.”

Undergraduate major

Some 71 undergraduate students, including 58 first-year students and 13 transfer students, will join the Keough School as global affairs majors this fall.

The cohort includes 16 students who attended high school outside the United States. This year, four students will be part of the University’s Glynn Family Honors Program.

Master of Global Affairs program

The Master of Global Affairs program welcomes 43 new students, including 15 U.S. citizens and 28 international students from 16 countries: Argentina, Bangladesh, Colombia, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Portugal and Rwanda.

Two students were awarded the Dean’s Fellowship by the University’s Graduate School, and one student has been awarded a Truman Scholarship, an award given to U.S. students who show exceptional leadership and plan to pursue careers in public service.

By major, the class includes:

• Governance and Policy: 14 students
• International Peace Studies: 15 students
• Sustainable Development: 14 students

This year’s students come to the Keough School from a variety of professional backgrounds. Seven are returned Peace Corps volunteers, having served in Colombia, Fiji, Jamaica, Namibia, Peru, the Philippines and Tonga. Two are former AmeriCorps national service members who served as literacy tutors and English-language instructors.

In addition, two students are Notre Dame undergraduate alumni. Three have experience with the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program, having served in Colombia, Spain and Uruguay. One is a fellow of the Oxfam Young Leaders Programme and another previously served as an advisor to former U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy.

Doctoral programs

Peace studies

Five students are joining the school’s various peace studies Ph.D. programs.

• Kumilachew Anteneh (Peace Studies and Anthropology) is an assistant professor of social anthropology at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia. His research will explore youth agency in Ethiopia and how young people restore social belonging and moral order in the aftermath of conflict and displacement.
  
  
• Aref Dostyar (International Peace Studies) is the program director for the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development at the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. His research will focus on turning an existing peacebuilding initiative, the Afghanistan Dialogue and Visioning Process, into a generalizable and academically validated framework for dialogue in divided societies.
  
  
• Ruth Gelane (Peace Studies and Theology) previously completed a master’s program at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. Her research will examine gendered, sexualized violence against women, particularly in the Ethiopian context, in a way that is rooted in African womanist discourse and wisdom. She is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
  
  
• Sadiqa Sultan (International Peace Studies) is a development practitioner, peacebuilder, researcher and rights activist with more than 12 years of experience. Her research will focus on the ways exposure to trauma and violence shapes women's agency, empowerment and identity in violent contexts.
  
  
• Owen Wang (Peace Studies and Political Science) comes from George Washington University, where he recently completed his master’s degree. His research will use the case study of East Asian memory creation in post-World War II China, Korea and Japan to investigate the conceptual groundwork for their memorialization and historical consciousness. He is a recipient of the University’s Richard and Peggy Notebaert Premier Fellowship.

Sustainable development

Three students are joining the Ph.D. in Sustainable Development, a STEM-designated program.

• Fucong Niu will research how international political rivalries impact clean energy supply chains and green investments, focusing on how developing countries can build secure and fair climate strategies.
  
  
• Girika Sharma will study how climate impacts such as extreme heat affect low-income communities and how policies can be designed to better protect them. She is a Notre Dame Presidential Fellow.
  
  
• Tianyi Xiao will examine how forest conservation policies and farming practices in Africa can protect ecosystems while supporting the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.

Learn more: Keough School academic programs

• Global Affairs undergraduate major
• Master of Global Affairs program
• Ph.D. programs

On Tuesday (Aug. 18), Pope Leo XIV appointed two University of Notre Dame faculty members, Emmanuel Katongole and Clemens Sedmak, as consultors to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. University Trustee Kathryn “Katie” Koch, president and CEO of TCW, a global investment management firm, was also named a consultor.

Katongole, a professor of theology and peace studies and director of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion; Sedmak, a professor of social ethics and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; and Koch are among 12 new consultors from around the globe—and the only three selected from within the United States. They have been appointed for a five-year term.

Consultors may be religious or laypeople and are chosen “from among the faithful who are distinguished by their expertise, proven ability, and prudence,” according to the Vatican’s announcement.

“These appointments are a tremendous honor not only for Emmanuel, Clemens, and Katie, but for the University as a whole,” said Notre Dame President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. “We congratulate them on their selection, and we are deeply grateful for the Holy Father’s recognition of their expertise and abiding commitment to the Church. We look forward to the ways their leadership and wisdom will guide the important work of the dicastery.”

Established by the late Pope Francis in 2016, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development supports the Church’s worldwide efforts in the areas of human dignity and human rights, economic justice, care for creation, migration, and displacement, as well as peace, conflict, and humanitarian crises.

Katongole, who came to Notre Dame in 2013, holds a joint appointment in the University’s College of Arts and Letters and Keough School of Global Affairs. A native of Kampala, Uganda, and a priest of the Kampala Archdiocese, he is the founder and president of Bethany Land Institute, a residential agricultural institute that works with young people to realize the vision, spirituality, and practice of Laudato si’ in Uganda. Before joining the Notre Dame faculty, he served as an associate professor of theology and world Christianity at Duke University and was a founding co-director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. He earned a Bachelor of Divinity at the Pontifical University Urbaniana in Rome, as well as a master’s in religious studies and a doctoral degree in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

Sedmak, a concurrent professor of theology, holds a joint appointment in Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns and the Keough School. His research focuses on issues of poverty, justice, and the Catholic social tradition, as well as a collaboration with Notre Dame colleagues on the Church’s role in acclimating refugees into Italian society. A native Austrian, Sedmak holds a doctoral degree in theology from the Catholic Private University of Linz and doctoral degrees in philosophy and social theory from the University of Innsbruck. Prior to joining Notre Dame, Sedmak served as the F.D. Maurice Professor for Moral Theology and Social Theology at King’s College London. He also held multiple positions at the University of Salzburg and was president of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Ethics in Salzburg.

Koch, a Notre Dame alumna, was named a University Trustee in 2023. Prior to moving to TCW, she spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs in a variety of leadership positions, including chief investment officer of public equity. She graduated from Notre Dame in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and English.

Originally published by Carrie Gates at news.nd.edu on August 20, 2026.

The June 29 through July 1 symposium, “Religion and Global Politics across Disciplines and Publics,” convened scholars, diplomats and religious leaders to discuss topics ranging from including religious voices in policy discussions to examining the ways religious institutions have both enabled and mobilized against autocratic rule.

The conference aligns with the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative and with Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, which supports research on democracy and human rights and explores how religion connects to policy through the school’s Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion. The gathering was supported by a Democracy Catalyst Grant from the initiative.

“Religious authority is one of the few forms of trust still intact in many polarized and divided societies, and whether that trust serves the dignity and rights of all people is a central puzzle,” said Joel Day, managing director of the Democracy Initiative. “This relationship between democracy and religion is a thematic priority of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative for exactly this reason. This symposium underscored how the University, through the Keough School and its Ansari Institute, convenes scholars working at the forefront of these issues.”

Religion still matters to politics, even when it’s ignored

Erin K. Wilson, recipient of the 2026 Ansari Book Prize for her book, “Religion and World Politics: Connecting Theory with Practice,” opened the symposium by challenging a common assumption in diplomacy and scholarship alike: that religion has become irrelevant to serious policymaking.

Wilson argued that religion continues to shape institutions and norms in ways policymakers often fail to see, precisely because they have been trained to operate in a secular idiom. The resurgence of Christian nationalism in the West, she said, is one clear sign that religion has not receded from politics. It has simply gone unaddressed. 

Presentations throughout the symposium extended this argument across multiple contexts, including the Philippines, Kenya and Peru.

Building the next generation of scholarship

The symposium also showcased the Ansari Institute’s investment in emerging scholars. Its six 2025-26 Global Fellows spent the academic year refining dissertations into book manuscripts with Notre Dame faculty mentors. One fellow, Jacob Katumusiime, recently signed a contract with Columbia University Press.

On the symposium’s final day, fellows joined current and former participants in the Rome Summer Seminars, a multiweek writing and policy-centered workshop for graduate student work on religion and global politics. The seminars were co-sponsored with John Cabot University at the European Academy of Religion’s annual conference, extending the network of scholars working at the intersection of these two academic fields of study.

“This convening underscores the Ansari Institute’s wide-ranging work to support human dignity and flourishing through research, teaching and outreach that explores how religion shapes our world,” said Rev. Emmanuel Katongole, professor of theology and peace studies and director of the Ansari Institute. “Discussions like this are an important part of our work to connect with religious communities, faith and civic leaders, scholars and journalists as we work to inform larger conversations around religion and policy.”

Originally published by Joshua Lupo at ansari.nd.edu on August 17, 2026.

More than 3.4 million American children, or about 6 percent of the school-age population, now learn at home, and that group has grown at nearly three times the pre-pandemic rate. Homeschooling is also increasingly popular in countries including Canada and the United Kingdom, as more parents look to customize educational options for their children.

A new study co-authored by University of Notre Dame researcher Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat shows how artificial intelligence can empower parents to be engaged educators who tailor curriculums and learning plans that meet their children’s needs.

The study was published in the 2026 proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the flagship conference for researchers working in human-computer interaction.

“School-centered platforms optimize for classroom control, standardized pacing and scale, but homeschooling families often prioritize adaptable routines, value-aligned materials and community-based support,” said Rifat, assistant professor of tech ethics and global affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “We wanted to build something that keeps parents in control as reflective partners who shape what their children actually learn.”

Rifat and his colleagues designed a digital platform powered by a large language model. Their goal was to accommodate a diverse cohort of homeschooling families whose needs range from academic flexibility and cultural alignment to school safety concerns. During the study, they worked with Muslim families in the greater Toronto area, evaluating the platform’s usability and overall effectiveness from April to July 2025. Over time, they hope to work with larger groups in multiple communities.

Researchers designed the platform, called Homeroom, around three goals: supporting parents as active participants who shape their children's education; promoting culturally responsive personalization to help families create identity-affirming learning environments; and facilitating parents’ collaboration within a trusted circle of fellow homeschoolers.

The tool’s workflow enabled participants to brainstorm, create and refine stories for their children’s ethics education and to craft curriculums that incorporated family heritage and cultural norms alongside age-appropriate educational standards.

Findings underscore need for agency, representation

Researchers found that parents embraced a trust-but-verify approach, wanting to preview and edit educational materials before sharing them with their children. That desire for control was especially evident around cultural representation.

Some parents used the platform to fill gaps in available materials, generating stories that reflected their children’s cultural identities. One participant said she would use the tool primarily because heritage stories are difficult to find in libraries and too costly to keep buying. Parents appreciated being able to adjust tone, setting and cultural motifs including familiar foods, holidays and everyday customs until a story felt right for their child.

They also identified a need for precision around cultural values. When one participant asked the platform to generate stories emphasizing humility, she received moralizing narration rather than what she had in mind, which was a set of concrete, everyday practices her children already knew, such as sitting on the floor to eat. The experience pointed to a broader finding: Generic value labels are not enough. Families needed tools to define what those values actually look like in their household.

Researchers also found that participants preferred small, intimate groups over broad forums, which they found made it easier to ask sensitive questions and receive practical feedback. Parents wanted to follow trusted peers, adapt shared lessons while providing clear attribution and retain the option to monetize original content.

In addition, parents asked for tools to reduce administrative workload, including reusable rubrics, a portfolio generator and connections to local events that could feed directly into student records.

Addressing a larger challenge in human-AI collaboration

The study is a natural extension of Rifat’s broader research agenda, which examines how AI can move beyond one-size-fits-all design to better serve diverse communities with distinct cultural needs and values.

It also addresses the concern that AI risks being sycophantic and simply reinforcing what the user already believes. While that risk is real, Rifat said, well-designed personalization can create space for communities to encounter difference rather than avoid it. Homeroom included features that exposed children to materials from outside their own background precisely for that reason.

“One of the critiques I hear is that we’re building echo chambers,” Rifat said. “But personalization is already happening whether we like it or not. The question is whether we design it in a way that brings communities together or drives them further apart.”

Rifat co-authored the study with Ayla Khan, a student at the University of Toronto Mississauga; Nouran Yahya, a student at the University of Waterloo and a research assistant at the University of Toronto Mississauga during the study; and Samar Sabie, assistant professor at the University of Toronto. The study received funding from the Urban Challenge Grant program at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities.

In addition to his role at the Keough School, Rifat holds a concurrent appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering within Notre Dame’s College of Engineering. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business, Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion and Pulte Institute for Global Development as well as Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society.

Each year, approximately 700,000 children worldwide die from diseases that vaccines could have prevented, nearly all of them in low- and middle-income countries. New research from University of Notre Dame economist Santosh Kumar Gautam finds that India’s national childhood immunization program helped address this persistent global health challenge, producing substantial reductions in child deaths.

The study, published in the Journal of Population Economics, also found that the immunization program had mixed long-term effects on educational attainment. While exposure to the program reduced primary school completion, it increased secondary school completion, suggesting that improvements in child survival can influence education through multiple pathways. Findings underscore the importance of coordinating health and education policies so that gains in child survival are matched by investments in schools and learning.

“Vaccines are one of the most cost-effective investments a country can make in improving child health and human capital,” said Gautam, professor of development and global health economics at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “I wanted to understand not only how India's immunization program saved lives, but also how it affected educational trajectories and human capital development.”

An experiment that reduced infant mortality

India launched its Universal Immunization Programme in 1985 and implemented it district by district, reaching full national coverage by 1990. Because some districts received the program years before others, and because only children under age 1 were eligible for the vaccines, Gautam was able to compare children born just before and just after the program arrived in their district.

Drawing on a national survey of nearly 900,000 children, Gautam found that the program reduced infant mortality by 0.4 percentage points and under-five mortality by 0.5 percentage points — substantial gains at a time when nearly 1 in 10 infants died before their first birthday.

Those mortality gains were concentrated among children in rural areas, from poor households and from historically disadvantaged caste groups. Children from wealthier, urban or higher-caste households saw little change, Gautam said. This may be because many already had access to vaccination before the program arrived.

Mixed educational outcomes

The study also found nuanced effects on educational attainment. While the immunization program reduced primary school completion, it increased secondary school completion among surviving children.

Gautam said the results may reflect who survived because of the program. Some children who benefited from vaccination may not have reached school age otherwise; and, as a group, they tended to have poorer underlying health. That change in the student population may have lowered average primary school completion rates.

Meanwhile, children who would have survived regardless but were healthier because of vaccination were more likely to complete secondary school. Strained school infrastructure may also have reinforced the pattern, Gautam said. A sudden increase in surviving children can crowd classrooms and stretch already limited resources, particularly in the early grades.

Designing health and education policy together

Ultimately, Gautam said, the research shows health and education investments work best when they are planned holistically rather than treated as unrelated priorities.

“This study illustrates how health and education planners can strengthen their coordination and produce better outcomes by working together,” Gautam said. “In addition to focusing on saving lives, governments should design policies that follow children into the classroom.”

The study also challenges the assumption that large public health campaigns in developing countries are inevitably undermined by weak implementation, Gautam said. Despite documented problems with medical absenteeism and service delivery in India’s health system, the program still produced a measurable reduction in child deaths.

The research contributes to Gautam’s broader work as an economist who studies how investments in early child and maternal health can reduce poverty and help people thrive. It is particularly relevant for resource-constrained settings, where smarter policy design is critical to improving outcomes amid limited funding.

“Effective immunization policy requires measuring not only who vaccines protect, but also how they shape broader human capital and support the best use of scarce public resources,” Gautam said.

A development and global health economics expert at Notre Dame, Gautam is the director of doctoral studies for the Keough School’s Ph.D. in Sustainable Development and directs the sustainable development major in the school’s Master of Global Affairs program. He is an affiliate of Notre Dame’s Eck Institute for Global Health and the Building Inclusive Growth (BIG) Lab (part of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development) and a faculty fellow at the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute.  

The study received open access funding from the University of Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries.

Media Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Alexander Dowling, Tony and Sarah Earley Collegiate Professor of Energy and the Environment and associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Emily Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy in the Keough School of Global Affairs and concurrent associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences, will represent Notre Dame at the event.

The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering symposia bring together emerging engineering leaders from industry, academia, and government labs to discuss pioneering technical work and leading-edge research.

“Professors Dowling and Grubert are outstanding early-career engineers, and we are delighted that they are being recognized by the Academy,” said Patricia J. Culligan, the Matthew H. McCloskey Dean of the College of Engineering. “The interdisciplinary nature of their research agendas makes them perfectly suited for this opportunity. I expect their experiences at the symposia to spark important cross-disciplinary collaborations and enrich entirely different fields with the transfer of techniques and methodologies.”

Dowling’s research integrates chemical engineering, computational optimization, and machine learning to develop advanced models and decision-support tools that bridge the gap between lab-bench and industrial-scale production. With work spanning energy systems, carbon capture, sustainable hydrogen, critical materials, and advanced separation technologies, his focus is integrated energy systems and separation systems modeling, including work that couples economic electric grid models with the dynamic operation of industrial systems. His research group contributes to several open-source software projects for mathematical modeling, optimization, uncertainty quantification, and experiment design for complex systems.

Dowling, who joined Notre Dame’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2017, earned his doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University.

Grubert is a civil engineer and environmental sociologist who studies how we can make better decisions about large infrastructure systems, particularly related to justice-centering decarbonization of the U.S. energy system. Her specific area of focus is the socioenvironmental impacts of energy policy and infrastructure, and how community and societal priorities can be better incorporated into policy and project decisions. Her major methods include scenario analysis, life cycle assessment, survey and interview research and text mining.

Grubert, who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2022, holds a Ph.D. in environment and resources from Stanford University. From 2021-2022, she served as the deputy assistant secretary for carbon management at the U.S. Department of Energy. In addition to her appointments in the College of Engineering, she is a core faculty affiliate of the Keough School’s Pulte Institute for Global Development.

Together with their fellow engineers also selected for the symposia, Dowling and Grubert will explore four topics: innovation in bioengineered materials, computing challenges for artificial intelligence, agriculture as a system-of-systems, and hypersonics.

The 2026 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium will be held September 21-24 at the University of Texas at Austin.

Originally published at engineering.nd.edu.

Awarded through Indiana's Community Collaboration Fund, the grant will fund the development of the AI Pocket Mentor, a digital business coach platform designed specifically for microentrepreneurs in northwest Indiana. Available 24 hours a day and accessible by smartphone, the platform will provide personalized guidance on competitor analysis, pricing, supplier sourcing, marketing, hiring and business compliance. Built to adapt to varying literacy levels, it will retain interaction history, allowing it to serve as an ongoing business coach rather than a one-time resource.

The AI Pocket Mentor builds on the work of the McKenna Center's Urban Poverty and Business Initiative (UPBI), which equips entrepreneurs with the tools, knowledge and support to overcome barriers to starting and growing successful businesses. Since its founding, UPBI has expanded to 59 cities, with more than 11,000 entrepreneurs having completed the program, more than 4,000 businesses launched and 4,500 jobs created.

"Too many aspiring entrepreneurs lack access to the kind of business guidance that can make the difference between struggling and succeeding," said Michael H. Morris, professor of the practice and founder of UPBI. "The AI Pocket Mentor puts practical, personalized coaching in entrepreneurs' hands whenever they need it. It extends our mission of helping people use entrepreneurship as a pathway to greater economic opportunity and long-term stability."

The AI Pocket Mentor will complement UPBI's in-person coaching and entrepreneurship training by providing structured guidance between meetings and outside traditional business hours. By reinforcing UPBI's proven 80-Step Journey to Sustainable Success framework, the platform will help entrepreneurs make informed decisions, strengthen their businesses and build a more secure economic future.

The project is one of 22 initiatives selected for funding through Indiana's Community Collaboration Fund, which supports community-led projects that strengthen entrepreneurship and accelerate small business growth across the state.

"Making Indiana the very best place to start, build and grow a business is a driving force of my administration,” said Indiana Governor Mike Braun. “These grants will support programs identified by communities as critical to the growth and success of their entrepreneurial and small business economies, supporting long-term job creation and wage growth. Thanks to the commitment and creativity of our regions, these programs will help founders and leaders bring new ideas to life, implement new technologies and future-proof their businesses.”

Media Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

For more than two million women and girls in Afghanistan, educational opportunities have narrowed dramatically since the Taliban's return to power in 2021. Afghanistan is the only country in the world that prohibits girls from continuing beyond the sixth grade, even though more than 90 percent of Afghans support their right to learn, according to U.N. Women.

A new partnership between the Keough School of Global Affairs and Woman Online University in Afghanistan aims to expand educational opportunities for Afghan women amid the country’s ongoing restrictions. Founded in 2022, Woman Online University has served more than 20,000 students across 16 academic disciplines, offering nearly 800 classes per week as well as significant mental health resources.

The institutions will work together to expand educational offerings for Woman Online University students through joint courses, research initiatives, academic events and resource-sharing. They also plan to co-host conversations on the challenges and opportunities facing higher education in Afghanistan.

“This partnership is about sustaining educational opportunity and intellectual community in a context where access to education has been deeply constrained,” said Mary Gallagher, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School. “And we see, as we have previously, how Afghan students continue to seek out learning in remarkable ways. That resilience is something that we cannot ignore and should encourage.”

Resilience amid adversity

That resilience was on display at a virtual signing ceremony for the memorandum of understanding, where women like Samina, a medical student, shared how the online university had changed their lives.

“When I graduated from high school, I dreamed of becoming a doctor,” Samina said. “I wanted to serve people in my community. Then the doors of higher education were closed to us and I was shocked. What should I do now?”

Samina enrolled in Woman Online University after her father saw a social media post about it. And she is already using her education. Last year, when an earthquake in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province killed 800 people and injured more than 2,500, she used her hard-won skills to tend to people on the front lines.

“I worked alongside medical professionals, providing basic health care services,” Samina said. “At that moment, I asked myself, if I had not received this educational opportunity, would I have been able to help my people like that? Everything I am today, and every hope I have for my tomorrow, began with access to education.”

Raihan, a law student, said that the Taliban’s education ban was particularly painful for her family, since she was an only child. But finding a chance to continue was priceless.

“When education was taken away from girls, I felt that I was not only losing my future, but also the chance to prove that a daughter can be enough,” she said. “But this university not only gave me an education, but also the courage to dream again and believe in myself. Studying law has helped me understand my rights, the rights of others and how I can be a useful person in my community.”

Adeleh Zamani, the university’s vice president for student affairs, said that Samina and Raihan illustrate the resilience of students.

“At a time when girls are being deprived of education in Afghanistan, our university has become a space for them to grow and develop themselves,” Zamani said. “My colleagues and I have gotten to see that these young women are working so hard to achieve their dream and making a future that they have wanted and dreamed about.”

Aref Dostyar, the head of the Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development within the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, said that resilience helped inspire the partnership.

“Our goal is to support the incredible efforts and resilience of young women who are striving to acquire knowledge under unprecedentedly harsh, dark and exhausting circumstances,” he said.

Supporting an inclusive peace in Afghanistan

The partnership coalesced after months of discussions that Dostyar coordinated. In addition to Gallagher and Zamani, conversations included Farid Salangi, founder and president of Woman Online University; Erin B. Corcoran, executive director of the Kroc Institute; and Juan Flores Ramirez, the institute’s associate director for finance and administration.

The effort is part of the larger work of the Keough School’s Afghanistan Program for Peace and Development, which facilitates research, dialogue visioning and policy in an effort to help build a sustainable and inclusive peace that protects human rights.

An Afghan-led initiative, the program engages a wide variety of stakeholders from within Afghanistan and its diaspora, along with experts from around the world. It continues to inform global policy and practice, most recently sharing insights amid discussions about the future of the U.N. Security Council mandate in Afghanistan.

An opportunity for mutual learning

The partnership will begin taking shape this fall through new academic offerings for students, including a course on crisis leadership taught by Dostyar.

Gallagher said the collaboration presents an opportunity for mutual learning. While the Keough School hopes to support educational opportunities for Afghan women, she emphasized that Woman Online University has lessons to offer about sustaining learning amid adversity.

“We come to this partnership with deep respect for Woman Online University and what it is building,” Gallagher said. “We have a real openness to what we can learn about educating under constraint, about resilience and about what it takes to sustain learning communities in difficult circumstances. At its best, education expands possibilities and helps people imagine new futures for themselves and their communities.”