Democracy, Governance & Education

Jonathan Laurence is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy at Boston College. He is chair of the working group on Democracy, Governance, and Education in the Program on Global Ethics and Social Trust. Laurence is an Affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, Lifetime Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Director of Reset Dialogues (US). His primary areas of teaching and research are comparative politics and the intersection of religion and politics in Western Europe, Turkey, and North Africa. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three award-winning manuscripts: Coping with Defeat: Sunni Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Modern State; The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims; and Integrating Islam: Religious and Political Challenges in Contemporary France. Laurence is a former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, Wissenchaftszentrum Berlin, Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund, Fafo Institute/Norwegian Research Council (Oslo), LUISS University-Rome, Sciences Po (Paris) and the Brookings Institution (nonresident, 2003-2018). He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University, and his B.A. from Cornell University.

Angela Ards is Associate Professor of English and African & African Diaspora Studies, and Director of the Journalism Program, at Boston College. She teaches African American and contemporary American literature, focusing on cultural studies, literary journalism, and narratives of place. She is the author of Words of Witness: Black Women's Autobiography in the Post-Brown Era; her current book project uses oral histories to chronicle the lives of black Americans who bypassed the Great Migration to remain in the South. Ards has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in English from Princeton University, an M.A. in Afro-American Studies from the University of California at Los Angeles, and her B.A. in English and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Chris Higgins is Associate Professor and Chair of the Formative Education Department in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, where he also leads the program in Transformative Educational Studies. A philosopher of education, he seeks to articulate the existential dimensions of teaching and learning, to defend the idea of education as a public good, and to recall education to its humane roots. He is the author of The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice, and is at work on a new book entitled Humane Learning: Formative Essays on Educational Integrity, an inquiry into the problems and possibilities of formative higher education. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy and Education from Columbia University and his B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University

Linda Hogan is Professor of Ecumenics in the School of Religion at Trinity College Dublin, where she also served as Vice-Provost, Chief Academic Officer, and Deputy President from 2011-2016. She has extensive experience in research and teaching in pluralist and multi-religious contexts. As an ethicist and ecumenist, her primary interests are in inter-religious ethics, social and political ethics, human rights, and gender. She is the author of three major monographs, including Keeping Faith with Human Rights (Georgetown, 2015), and the editor of twelve edited volumes and special issues of journals. She has worked on a consultancy basis for a number of national and international organizations focusing on developing ethical infrastructures. Hogan received her Ph.D. in Theology from Trinity College Dublin, and an M.A. and B.A. from Maynooth University

M. Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College, where she is the first faculty member to hold a joint appointment in both the Theology Department and the Law School. Her research and teaching focus on the relationship of law, religion, and morality, and she has published over 100 scholarly articles on law, ethics, and medical ethics, in addition to her regular column in Commonweal magazine and frequent media appearances. Kaveny’s most recent books are Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought (Oxford, 2017) and Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square (Harvard, 2018) andUniversity Press). A member of the Massachusetts Bar, Kaveny clerked for the Honorable John T. Noonan Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and worked as an associate at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray in its health law group. She received her J.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and an A.B. from Princeton University.

Nelson Ribeiro is Associate Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Human Sciences at the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa in Lisbon, where he also coordinates the doctoral program in Communication Studies. He is a scholar of media history, propaganda and disinformation, media and colonialism, and journalism studies. Ribiero is a member of the Board of the Research Center for Communication and Culture (CECC), a member of Academia Europaea, affiliated with the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), and is the Chair of the Communication History section at the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). He received his Ph.D in Communication and Culture Studies from the University of Lincoln (UK).

Francisco de Roux, SJ is a Jesuit priest, economist, and philosopher widely recognized for his work towards peace building, reconciliation, and dignifying the victims of the fifty-year Colombian armed conflict. From 2016-2022 he chaired the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition, whose 11 commissioners worked with a staff of 3,000 to investigate major human rights violations and shed light on the causes and origins of the conflict. Their final report, presented in June 2022, received worldwide coverage. Fr. de Roux has been honored with Sakharov Prize and other human rights awards and honorary doctorates for his work. He is the author of several books in multiple languages on issues of public ethics, social conflict and development, most notably The Price of Peace (Los Precios de la Paz) and The Audacity of Imperfect Peace (La audacia de la paz imperfecta). He received his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, an M.A from the London School of Economics, and his B.A. in philosophy and theology at the Universidad Javeriana and the Universidad de los Andes, both in Bogota, Colombia.

Elias Omondi Opongo, SJ is a Senior Lecturer at the Hekima University Institute of Peace Studies and International Relations, in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a peace practitioner with a focus on conflict resolution, reconciliation, community peacebuilding, humanitarian assistance, transitional justice, post-conflict reconstruction, and state-building. Most recently he is the co-editor of Elections, Violence, and Transitional Justice in Africa (2023) and has published many books, chapters, and articles on the complex causes of conflict today, especially in Africa. He received a Ph.D. in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Bradford (UK).

Martin Summers is Professor of History and former director of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program at Boston College. A faculty affiliate of BC’s Medical Humanities, Health, and Culture Program, and the Women's and Gender Studies Program, Summers is a cultural historian of the 19th and 20th century United States, focusing on race, gender, sexuality, and medicine. He is the author of the award-winning book Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation's Capital (Oxford, 2019), and is at work on a project entitled Inner City Blues: African American Mental Health and Social Policy in Twentieth Century Urban America, which examines how social scientists, psychiatrists, government officials, and community organizers understood the relationship between urbanization and mental illness, and sought to address the mental health care needs of African Americans in so-called ghettos. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from Rutgers University, B. A. in History-Social Sciences Education, Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia, May 1990.