Meanwhile, recruitment efforts gathered momentum through counselor workshops in Mexico and student fairs in Brazil and Hong Kong. Research dialogues with partner institutions in Beijing and back on campus included the possibility of future research collaboration, faculty engagement, and student programming as well as technology's role in uplifting vulnerable communities.

Santiago

Notre Dame Santiago fall semester students explored local Chilean craftsmanship during a visit to Pomaire, a rural town near Santiago celebrated for its rich tradition of greda (clay) artwork. Guided by local sculptor Rodrigo, the students observed time-honored pottery techniques and learned more about the region's cultural heritage.

Rome

Through Notre Dame Rome, students gain access to some of the city’s most extraordinary cultural and research institutions, opening the door to libraries, archives, and collections. In this photo, Rome International Scholars and Rome Dissertation Research Fellows view some of the American Academy in Rome's (AAR) most treasured books in the Barbara Goldsmith Rare Book Room and the Chiaraviglio Rare Book Collection. Located on Rome’s Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill), the AAR is dedicated to independent study and advanced research in the fine arts and humanities.

Hong Kong

Exchange students currently studying at Hong Kong University (HKU) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) helped represent Notre Dame alongside Catherine Leung, director of Notre Dame Hong Kong, as she attended recruitment events throughout the region.

London

Students perform the Epilogue of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in a hands-on theatre workshop with Actors From The London Stage. This semester, the cohort tackles the idea of “London and You”—exploring where their own academic formation intersects with the city’s wide-reaching, multidisciplinary offerings.

Jerusalem

As part of the University's academic path exploration, students in Notre Dame Jerusalem's ADAM Pre-College Gap Year program visited the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where they engaged with faculty and university representatives and explored opportunities in different fields of study.

São Paulo

Thaïs Pires, director of Notre Dame São Paulo, visited Colégio Bom Jesus in Curitiba, Brazil, and participated in local school recruitment fairs throughout the month. Brazilian students currently make up the largest percentage of international students at Notre Dame. 

Mumbai

Beijing

Jingyu Wang, executive director of Notre Dame Beijing, visited Sichuan University and met with representatives from the School of International Studies, the Institute for Religious Studies, and the College of Arts. The visit reinforced the relationship between the two institutions through discussions on shared academic interests. Both sides also explored opportunities for future research, faculty engagement, and student programming.

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Mexico

Notre Dame Mexico welcomed Mary de Villiers, director of international enrollment at Notre Dame, to Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey. A highlight of her visit was a professional development session with high school counselors from both public and private schools, creating a space to exchange ideas, strengthen connections, and share resources to better support students interested in US higher education. The director also connected with prospective students and alumni while sharing more about undergraduate opportunities at Notre Dame.

Dublin

Notre Dame Dublin study abroad students embarked on a secondhand bookstore crawl, discovering hidden gems across Dublin City while promoting sustainable practices. The crawl is one of several sustainability-focused events held as part of the Season of Creation.

Global Innovation Team

Jonathan Noble, Notre Dame Global's senior assistant provost for internationalization and global executive director, shares insights on a panel discussing "The Globally Networked University" at the QS Back to School Summit in New York City.

This photo gallery highlights some of the valuable interactions and experiences Notre Dame faculty, staff, students, and alumni have taken part in over the past month. The selection was curated by Notre Dame Global staff working on campus and in the University's 12 global locations. View past photo essays.

When she returned to Notre Dame and shared her experience with students preparing for the next semester abroad, applications for research placements surged within weeks. It was the boost the program had been building toward for more than a decade.

While the Puebla study abroad program started in 1998, due to its continued growth, the program was assigned its own director in 2003. After three years of individual meetings with students—keeping detailed notes on their majors, interests, and goals—Director of the Puebla Program and Initiatives Lisette Monterroso identified a clear trend and brought a proposal to Notre Dame Mexico Director Maria Mercedes: split the program. The spring semester would remain open to students from all disciplines, while the fall semester would become exclusively focused on pre-med students. This was to better align academic and cultural programming with the educational goals of each group and to lay the groundwork for future research opportunities.

At the same time, another relationship was quietly taking shape. Through the efforts of a Notre Dame alumnus who had become an enthusiastic ambassador for the University throughout Latin America, UPAEP leaders connected with Notre Dame in 2006. The following year, a delegation from UPAEP traveled to South Bend, met with Notre Dame leadership, and established the first formal collaboration agreements between the two institutions, creating a foundation of trust that would shape everything that followed. At the same time, UPAEP medical students were participating in clinical internships at a hospital in South Bend—experiences that deepened institutional ties and opened new possibilities in the health sciences.

By 2010, that foundation had grown into a formal partnership between the Notre Dame Puebla Program and UPAEP, which was, at the time, the only private university in Puebla with a medical school holding official accreditation, making it a natural fit for a program increasingly driven by pre-med students.

In 2014, UPAEP's director of graduate studies and research began making visits to Notre Dame with a clear vision: to build something that went beyond undergraduate exchange. That effort led to a key meeting in the summer of 2015, when Juan Manuel López Oglesby, academic director of UPAEP's Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, traveled to Notre Dame's Office of International Studies and met with Sharon Stack, the Dunne and Elizabeth Riley Director at the Harper Cancer Research Institute and Kleiderer-Pezold Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Andrew Bullock, associate director of the Harper Cancer Research Institute. Their discussions revealed a strong alignment of interests in oncology and biomedical research. At the institute’s suggestion, López Oglesby was also introduced to NDnano to explore UPAEP's work in technology commercialization, product development, and industry partnerships. Later that year, Stack and Bullock visited Puebla for the first time, attended a biomedical engineering conference at UPAEP, and toured the inaugurated CIO-UNE-UPAEP, a joint research center where UPAEP’s scientific expertise meets the mission of nonprofit Una Nueva Esperanza (UNE), which opened its doors that May.

In January 2016, Baños Lara took on the role of director of research at CIO-UNE-UPAEP and became the driving force behind the transformation of goodwill into structured scientific collaboration. What students needed, it turned out, wasn't a summer—it was a full semester. A formal medical research program was embedded within the study abroad experience, awarding three academic credits for hands-on research under UPAEP faculty. Christine Mai and Allan Weidmann were the first two participants, selected through a competitive application process. They would not be the last.

The following year, a formal research project jointly developed by Laurie Littlepage, Campbell Family Associate Director of Cancer Research of the Harper Cancer Research Institute, and Baños Lara and written by then-doctoral student María Cristina Miranda-Vergara, received competitive funding through Harper's Research Like A Champion program. The project sent Notre Dame student Gia Ferrara across both laboratories—first training in Littlepage's lab, where Miranda-Vergara taught her molecular biology techniques, then applying those skills in Baños Lara's lab in Puebla. It was one of the earliest formal efforts in which Harper's resources simultaneously benefited researchers and students on both sides of the border, and when the findings were presented at Harper Cancer Research Day that same year, the model had a name and a future.

The program grew in every direction. What began as oncology research at CIO-UNE-UPAEP expanded across departments and disciplines. Today, 11 UPAEP faculty members host Notre Dame students every fall, supervising work in biotechnology, veterinary medicine, chemistry, nutrition, psychology, and biomedical sciences. Partner institutions like the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónicahave joined the network. For more than eight years, 90 students have conducted real, rigorous, meaningful research under UPAEP faculty—21 of them working directly under Baños Lara at CIO-UNE-UPAEP. The exchange runs both ways: UPAEP students have also traveled to Notre Dame through Harper's iSURE program, deepening a partnership built on genuine reciprocity.

Funding has followed. Through Thomas Merluzzi, a professor in Notre Dame's Department of Psychology and a member of the Harper Cancer Research Institute, the Kelly Cares Foundation committed $48,000 to a study on the psychosocial well-being of cancer patients and caregivers at CIO-UNE-UPAEP—a project that began in 2019 and continues today. A new initiative called ABRAZO is about to launch, focused on helping patients manage pain through digital health tools, in partnership with Kathleen Bergman of Notre Dame and Francesca Wuttke, CEO of nen, a company that developed the Nendo digital pain management platform.

This year, that growth was on full display at Cancer Research Day, the Harper Cancer Research Institute's 14th annual gathering where researchers from across disciplines gather to share findings and mark how far the work has come. It built on momentum from earlier that year, when four UPAEP research professors visited campus in April 2025 and sparked at least two new collaborative projects already underway. Pre-med students from the fall 2024 and fall 2025 cohorts presented posters based on their research conducted under UPAEP faculty in Puebla. Carlos Arias Matus presented as well—he first came to Notre Dame as a UPAEP master's student for a research internship in the Littlepage lab, and is now a doctoral researcher at the university. A delegation from Puebla, including Monterroso and UPAEP researchers Miranda-Vergara and Beatriz Pérez-Armendáriz, was there to witness this great success.

Twenty years ago, Notre Dame and UPAEP first established ties. Since then, the collaboration between the University of Notre Dame, UPAEP, and UNE continues to grow—welcoming students who want to do oncological research, make real connections, and contribute to work that reaches far beyond the classroom during their semester abroad.

Originally published by Norma Sofia Rivera Padilla at mexico.nd.edu on October 05, 2026.

Luca Grillo, professor and chair of the Department of Classics, has been appointed to a first-of-its-kind position in the College of Arts & Letters — a professorship focused on the global humanities with an appointment connected not to a department, but to one of the University of Notre Dame’s global locations.

As the Rome Global Humanities College Professor, Grillo is charged with deepening the research collaborations between Arts & Letters and Notre Dame Rome and enriching the academic experience for graduate and undergraduate students before, during, and after they study abroad there.

“Serving as the liaison between the College of Arts & Letters and Notre Dame Rome is an exciting mandate to expand our global humanistic engagement,” Grillo said. “By driving new student exchange initiatives and weaving tighter collaborative ties with universities and institutions from Rome and across Italy, we will cultivate an enduring scholarly bridge that enriches both academic communities.”

In his new role, Grillo will spend one out of every six semesters at Notre Dame Rome, teaching one undergraduate course there and advising student research projects and leading collaborative workshops and co-teaching a graduate course with partner institutions in Rome. He will also seek to build relationships with archives, universities, and scholars in Rome that will advance the research of Notre Dame students and faculty, including his own.

During his semesters in South Bend, in addition to his regular teaching, research, and service responsibilities to the Department of Classics, Grillo will serve as a key resource for students preparing to study abroad in Rome. He will advise them on courses to take before their semester there, ensure they have completed the necessary language learning, and help them build the skills and connections necessary to conduct research there. When students return to Notre Dame, Grillo will help them further develop their research into senior thesis projects and advise on additional coursework that will build upon their experiences in Rome.

“As the world’s leading global Catholic research university, we strive for our students to acquire a global perspective in how they see the world and themselves in the world,” said Kenneth Scheve, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. “With a leader like Luca strengthening the ties between Notre Dame and Rome, our students will be prepared to transform their time abroad into a defining experience that continues with them long after they come home.”

Grillo came to Notre Dame in 2018 after serving as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Scholar and associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and as an assistant professor at Amherst College. He holds a doctorate in classics from Princeton University, a master’s degree in classical and Near Eastern studies from the University of Minnesota, and a bachelor’s degree in literature and philosophy from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.

A scholar of Latin and Greek language and literature, Roman history, and Augustan poetry, he is the author of books including How to Make Money: An Ancient Guide to Wealth Management (Princeton, 2024) and The Art of Caesar's Bellum Civile (Cambridge, 2012). He also wrote a commentary on Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio (Oxford, 2015) and co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (Cambridge, 2017) with Christopher B. Krebs. He is currently working on a book on irony in Latin literature.

“By placing a scholar of Luca’s caliber at the very center of our Rome presence, we’re creating a model for how our faculty and students engage with the world in ever more dynamic and innovative ways,” said Michael Pippenger, Notre Dame’s vice president and associate provost for internationalization. “We’re grateful for the partnership with the College of Arts & Letters in imagining the power and impact of global humanities professorships.”

Grillo’s appointment is the first of this type that Scheve hopes to create, in partnership with Pippenger and Notre Dame Global, with the intent to have additional professorships tied to many of Notre Dame’s 11 other global locations.

“The humanities are the most vital way of understanding the human experience across time and cultures,” Scheve said. “To conduct influential research and shape the trajectories of our students, we must bring the best scholars into dialogue with people and traditions around the world — and a professorship like this makes that possible.”

Originally published by Josh Weinhold at al.nd.edu on September 30, 2026.

The book talk, titled “Pedagogy and Perspective in International Chinese Instruction,” was successfully held at Notre Dame Beijing on July 4, 2026. Sponsored by Notre Dame Beijing, the event examined grammar pedagogy and cultural narratives, featuring two major works co-authored by faculty members from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame.

Professor Yongping Zhu (University of Notre Dame) presented A Student Grammar of Chinese (Cambridge University Press, 2023). In his 30-minute presentation, Professor Zhu outlined the core goals and significance of his book project within the field of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language. Using engaging and accessible language, the volume examines the Chinese sound and writing systems, word formation rules, parts of speech, and sentence structures, while demystifying complex syntactic patterns and special constructions that typically challenge non-native learners. Professor Ying Lu (Beijing Union University) joined as a discussant to further explore effective pedagogical strategies for Chinese grammar instruction.

Next, Professor Jincheng Liu (University of Notre Dame) and his co-authors, Professor Chih-p’ing Chou (Princeton University) and Professor Xin Zou (NYU Shanghai), presented Small Things Writ Large (Princeton University Press, 2026), an intermediate reader exploring China’s rapid evolution through minor social phenomena. The authors reflected on 40 years of the Princeton University Chinese Language Program curriculum, analyzing how the pedagogical portrayal of China has evolved from a critical lens to one of nuanced, multi-dimensional understanding. Together, the presentations offered a comprehensive look at the changing landscape of Chinese language and culture education within the Princeton Model.

Jingyu Wang, executive director of Notre Dame Beijing, said: “Through this program, we hope to showcase the academic achievements of Notre Dame faculty to international audiences while supporting further research collaboration and co-authored publications with scholars around the world. We are grateful to Professor Yongping Zhu and Professor Jincheng Liu for sharing their research at Notre Dame Beijing’s inaugural Book Talk.”

The book talk received 363 registrations from participants representing 230 institutions and organizations across 24 countries and regions, including the United States and China, sparking lively exchanges and meaningful debates on handling nuanced social topics in the language classroom.

Beyond celebrating two landmark publications, the book talk served as an invaluable platform for academic dialogue. By bridging fundamental linguistic theory with innovative cultural pedagogy, the event inspired educators to adopt systematic, effective teaching methods that elevate students' language proficiency while actively cultivating their critical thinking skills—leaving a lasting, positive mark on the field of International Chinese Education.

Originally published by Prof. Jincheng Liu and Notre Dame Beijing at beijing.nd.edu on September 28, 2026.

Notre Dame Jerusalem, in partnership with Notre Dame’s Office of Pre-College Programs, welcomed its first cohort of students to the ADAM Pre-College Gap Year Program this September, following a year of recruitment, partnership-building, and curriculum development.

The program launched with a full induction day, bringing the inaugural cohort of 23 students together with Notre Dame Jerusalem leadership, faculty, and program partners.

“I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by an effort we may get nearer to the truth.”

Opening the orientation, Daniel Schwake, director of Notre Dame Jerusalem, shared this quote from Karl Popper to frame the upcoming year. He encouraged the students to question their assumptions, listen to different perspectives, and treat learning as a process of getting closer to the truth rather than arriving at it.

ADAM is built around a three-phase structure. The first phase, Discover Your Passion, helps students explore their interests through courses in critical thinking, leadership, philosophy, and university preparedness, while also including site visits to leading academic institutions and companies. The second, Strategic Academic Pathways, connects student interests and strengths to university and career choices. The third, Advanced Skill-Building, prepares them for university through standardized test preparation, intensive Hebrew-language training, and courses in coding and responsible computing.

Later in the day, Yara Abdeen, associate director of academic programming, spoke to the participants about the words printed on their T-shirts: “Do Something Extraordinary.” She explained to the students that these words are more than a slogan: they are an invitation to dream bigger, ask difficult questions, discover their passions, and imagine new possibilities for themselves. She connected this to a question at the heart of the Notre Dame tradition: “What would you fight for?”, asking students to reflect not only on what they want to achieve, but what kind of people they want to become.

As the first cohort begins this journey, ADAM aims to create more than a bridge between high school and university. It is a year for participants to explore their passions, challenge their assumptions, develop new skills, and begin imagining the kind of future they want to build. The journey has only just begun, and we look forward to seeing where their questions, curiosity, and ambitions will lead them.

Learn more about the ADAM Pre-College Gap Year Program here.

Originally published by Notre Dame Jerusalem at jerusalem.nd.edu on September 29, 2026.

In 2022, Notre Dame professors Peter Cholak and Neil Lutz (at the time, a visiting faculty member at Swarthmore College) assembled a research group at a workshop hosted by the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM), with themselves and Marianna Csöryei, University of Chicago; Don Stull, University of Chicago; Patrick Lutz, University of Michigan; and Elvira Mayordomo, University of Zaragoza.

The faculty members in the group have backgrounds in mathematics or computer science. Together, they set out to do cutting-edge research that combines the two disciplines, using techniques from both to address the topic of effective dimension, aiming to prove a new bound on the size of pinned distance sets. “Roughly, it asks how much you can learn about a location by merely knowing your distance from that location,” Lutz says. While AIM funds these research groups and the workshop serves as a jumping-off point for them, it’s up to the individuals to continue the work. And this group has done just that.

For the past four years, Cholak and Lutz have been regularly meeting with their group on Zoom to develop their research paper. While that’s been effective in keeping the research going, as Lutz puts it, it’s hard to have a productive Zoom meeting that goes beyond one hour. “You just run out of steam,” he says. “You can have really productive days in person in a way that doesn’t happen over Zoom.” Their in-person meetings were limited to the annual AIM conferences, and it was during a 2024 workshop that they sketched out an initial proof. However, due to government spending cuts, the 2025 AIM workshop was cancelled.

So when Cholak saw an opportunity via Notre Dame Global’s International Research Travel Grant to go to Spain to meet with Mayordomo in 2025, he took it. “The travel money got me to Zaragoza, which was great,” he says. “Just being there with Elvira made it easier to communicate and to move things forward,” he says. Their week working together in-person allowed them to add important detail and context to the proof, propelling the research project forward.

Beyond the research progress, Cholak also benefited from getting to experience his collaborator’s work environment. “It's great to see how other people live, what happens with other universities, how they interact with their students, and how other universities are set up,” he shares. And then there’s the social element—like going out for tapas at the end of a long day of research. For Cholak, spending that time together solidifies and improves their working relationship and results in smoother collaboration.

The International Travel Research Grant also funded Mayordomo’s visit to the United States for an in-person gathering in February of 2026, this time with multiple members of the research group in Chicago. “The opportunity to have additional in-person meetings with an international collaborator in the interim has been very important for maintaining the momentum of this ongoing collaboration,” Lutz attests. They used the time together to discuss revisions of their in-progress paper, as well as extensions and follow-up work. “Getting together is the glue that holds it together, and then the Zooms fill in the gaps,” adds Cholak.

Their collaboration resulted in a published paper and an international award to top it off. This August, Lutz traveled to Paris for the Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science conference, where he gave two talks and accepted the Best Paper Award for their group’s research paper, Algorithmic Information Bounds for Distances and Orthogonal Projections.

While the award is certainly a highlight, both Cholak and Lutz agree that what their research group accomplished has great value, with or without it. “It's an exceptional case,” Cholak says. “But even without the Best Paper Award, I think the collaboration has been, in our eyes, very successful.” So much so that the group will continue to meet to finalize a second paper and look forward to reconvening in person again at the AIM conference in June 2027.

Learn more about the support Notre Dame Global offers for international research by visiting the Grants and Funding page on our website.

This summer, Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) hosted “Ukraine in the World,” a new Ukrainian Studies Conference, marking a historic event for Ukraine and the many academic partners that support Ukrainian studies at their institutions.

The conference brought together over 250 participants, with 210 attending in person and an additional 40+ joining online. Attendees included scholars and representatives from universities and academic centers in 38 countries worldwide. The program covered a range of topics and featured more than 55 panels, research labs, roundtables, and book launches.

Representing Notre Dame were Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization; Grant Osborn, executive director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; and Rory Finnin, Notre Dame Collegiate Mission Chair in Ukrainian Studies and Global Affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs and the new director of Notre Dame's Ukrainian Studies Hub at Nanovic.

Finnin comes to Notre Dame from the University of Cambridge, where he launched the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies program in 2008. By the end of his tenure at Cambridge, he had curated and organized more than 40 exhibitions and cultural events, advancing public understanding of Ukraine’s language, history, and society in the UK and beyond.

During the conference, Finnin received the Ukrainian Studies Distinguished Award for Personal Contribution to the Development of Ukrainian Studies for his work building the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies program and his role in promoting Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar studies abroad.

Ultimately, the conference was designed to consolidate a growing network of Ukrainian Studies programs and centers around the world. While this marked one of the first gatherings of its kind, it will not be the last. The conference is meant to be a recurring event, with its presence at UCU, a Ukrainian university in Lviv, sending an intentional message about Ukraine’s central role in shaping one of Europe’s most urgent and vital fields.

Pippenger emphasizes the significance of UCU’s participation and partnership: “Notre Dame and UCU are united by our faith, by our commitment to preserving the cultural identity of Ukraine, and by a shared desire for the common good. This solidarity has led to the shared research projects that we are currently undertaking that promote resilience and innovation. It also calls us to continue to be together in person, as we were in Lviv, to be in scholarship and fellowship with one another. This conference was an opportunity to celebrate that and discuss how we can strengthen and build on our support for UCU and Ukraine overall.”

Related articles:

• Ukraine in the World: Inside the First Global Conference of Ukrainian Studies
• Ukraine in the World: UCU Hosts International Conference on Ukrainian Studies
• Keough School welcomes five new faculty and Visiting Professors of the Practice
• Why Ukraine: Notre Dame's Vision for a Vital Field
• Notre Dame announces new research collaborations with Ukrainian Catholic University

On September 7, Within Your Gates was officially launched by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, in partnership with Notre Dame Jerusalem at the University’s Tantur campus. The event brought together an intimate group of scholars and practitioners to celebrate the new initiative.

Director of Notre Dame Jerusalem Daniel Schwake, Ph.D., set the stage by chronicling the beginnings of Within Your Gates, which will serve as a Forum for applied interdisciplinary research and outreach—rooted in the realities of Jerusalem—convening scholars, faith, and civic leaders across traditions to serve the common good of the Holy City.

Schwake detailed his initial conversations with Cardinal Pizzaballa following the events of October 7, and an agreement that the only way forward was together. And together encompassed all peoples, a message Schwake reinforced in addressing the audience: “A Christian perspective can be whole only when it integrates the common good of all communities and hears all voices.”

From there, they held a series of discussions with Palestinians and Israelis of different political and religious beliefs to better understand how they saw their future in the Holy Land. Gradually, this process evolved into a project exploring the role that language plays in perpetuating conflict, with participants drafting essays on words that open and close hearts. These foundational steps over the course of several trying years eventually led to the launch of Within Your Gates.

Reflecting on the event, Vice President and Associate Provost for Internationalization Michael Pippenger shared: “Within Your Gates reflects Notre Dame’s conviction that universities can create spaces where scholarship, faith, and civic leadership come together in service of the common good. We are deeply grateful to His Beatitude for choosing Tantur as the place to launch this important initiative and dialogue. We look forward to contributing to and learning from this dialogue as it seeks to create new ways of understanding all of our responsibilities in the Holy Land."

The launch event featured a discussion between Professors Karma Ben Johanan and Sari Nusseibeh, moderated by Schwake, in addition to a conversation between Cardinal Pizzaballa and Alessandra Buzzetti, a Jerusalem-based journalist and Middle East correspondent. These dialogues were marked by honesty and intellectual rigor, exemplifying how the Forum can create an open space for expressing divergent opinions and perspectives.

“The purpose is not to agree,” Cardinal Pizzaballa told the audience. “You have to bring those who disagree, but are ready to listen…This empathic attitude is also very important; it helps you to understand the position of the different communities, the different opinions…Otherwise we risk building and producing something that is just ourselves.”

While there is an international sense of urgency around the current situation in the Holy Land, the Forum’s leadership understands that change will not happen overnight.

“Within Your Gates is not naive to the challenges around us,” Schwake said, “but believes in the value of the scientific method, advancing serious research and scholarly deliberation to produce publications with practical application.”

“It's very complicated right now. We are not ready to do it. The pain, the wounds, the mistrust is too deep,” Cardinal Pizzaballa admitted. And yet, the “impossible” task ahead is not an excuse to give up. “We cannot allow ourselves to leave—to give to the next generation—the situation as it is now. We have to do something.” The Forum is a space specifically designed to dream, to dare, to be uncomfortable, and to be a bothersome presence to dominant perspectives, he added.

Attended by around 100 people, the launch event showcased that in a polarized society there are many who still yearn for a different kind of conversation. More workshops, conferences, and essays will follow. And while these activities are critical to the Forum’s mission, they are not the metrics by which success will be judged.

“The success of this Forum will not ultimately be measured by the size of its events and the presence. It will be measured by the processes that will follow, by the discussions that will follow, by the impact that it will hopefully have on the deliberation process,” Schwake shared. “Tonight is not the culmination of Within Your Gates. It is just the beginning. Help us identify what we are not seeing. Challenge our assumptions. Write with us. Think with us. Join our conferences and workshops.”

Originally published by Jessie Carson at jerusalem.nd.edu on September 21, 2026.

This summer, eight students from Mexico took part in the International Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (iSURE) at the University of Notre Dame, arriving through three different partnerships.

Three of the eight—representing Universidad Aeronáutica en Querétaro (UNAQ), Universidad Politécnica de Santa Rosa Jáuregui, and Universidad Politécnica de Querétaro—came through the Becas Embajadores program in Querétaro. Another arrived through Notre Dame's newest partnership with Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México. The remaining students came from Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP), representing one of Notre Dame's longest-standing relationships with a Mexican institution. Together, the cohort reflects the range of ways Notre Dame's ties to Mexico continue to grow.

Notre Dame’s iSURE program pairs exceptional international students with Notre Dame faculty and research teams for a summer of hands-on research in a world-class academic environment while building international connections that will carry into their careers. Throughout the program, the students became part of Notre Dame’s community, allowing them to participate in campus life while also experiencing firsthand the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of research at the University. Beyond the laboratory, their time on campus offered an opportunity to exchange ideas with researchers and students from different backgrounds and imagine new possibilities for their own academic and professional paths.

Juan Antonio León Cárdenas, from Universidad Iberoamericana, was one of them. Looking back on the summer, what stayed with him most wasn't a single result, but the sense that his work mattered beyond his own summer—that it would “serve as a new building block for future breakthroughs in this field,” as he put it. That sense of contribution came near the end of the program, after weeks of designing systems and waiting on ordered materials. When all the components arrived and his tests worked, everything finally came together. Juan described watching “all the effort from the previous weeks culminate in successful, efficient electronics tests” as one of the proudest moments of his summer.

He carried that same energy into the Undergraduate Research Symposium, where iSURE students present their work in poster sessions alongside a Three-Minute Thesis competition. For Juan, the symposium wasn't just a chance to show what he'd built—it was an opportunity to learn from everyone else. He said he enjoyed looking at other people's work while setting up his own poster, and found that the questions from researchers and faculty “offered new perspectives on how to improve and scale the current project.”

Karla Díaz Ríos arrived at Notre Dame through the Becas Embajadores scholarship, a collaboration between Universidad Politécnica de Santa Rosa Jáuregui and the Querétaro state government. She'd seen photos and videos of campus before arriving, but nothing prepared her for being there. She described walking past the Golden Dome so often, and photographing it so many times, that it became a daily ritual. She lived in Flaherty Hall, one of the newer residence halls on campus, where Friday nights meant pizza and a movie with the other students living there, the kind of everyday closeness she says became one of the best parts of her summer.

Her research took her to the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, where she worked on a welding robot using wire-arc manufacturing to build lattice structures. When issues with the primary robot forced a change of plans, she ended up running her tests on a WX-200 teaching robot instead—a shift that pushed her into mechatronics, a field she admits wasn't her strongest going in. She left with a working knowledge of robotic motion systems and new skills in presenting technical work in English.

But for Karla, the summer's biggest changes weren't in the lab. She said she left the program as a different person: more independent, less afraid to navigate an unfamiliar place on her own, shaped by daily life alongside people from cultures around the world. She returned home with renewed motivation about her future, and gratitude toward both her university and the Querétaro state government for the support that made the summer possible.

But Notre Dame Mexico's network reaches beyond the country. Nathalie Rodríguez Diago, from Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua in Panama, was also part of this year's iSURE cohort. Presenting her research at the symposium pushed her to speak publicly in English rather than Spanish for the first time. For Nathalie, this was an important step in building her self-confidence, which she says she“already had but only in Spanish, but now can say it in both languages.” But the shift went deeper than language. The experience, she said, made her “turn 180” on research altogether: something she once couldn't picture herself doing, she now understood and respected enough to want to pursue further.

That kind of shift is the ultimate goal: iSURE is not just a summer program. It is often a first step—one that, for a growing number of students, leads them back to campus for good. For undergraduates in general, iSURE is a program where they can acquire skills, confidence, and global perspective to become researchers and innovators. For students from Mexico and Central America, it is also a chance to see up close what pursuing a research career and potentially graduate studies on an international stage can look like.

Notre Dame Mexico is proud of this year’s cohort and looks forward to seeing how they carry their experiences back to their universities, fields, and communities. Their summer at Notre Dame may have lasted only a few weeks, but the skills, relationships, and perspectives developed through iSURE have the potential to shape what comes next.

For students interested in a similar experience, applications for Summer 2027 will open in the coming months. Stay tuned for details on how to apply and become part of the next iSURE cohort.

Originally published by Norma Sofia Rivera Padilla at mexico.nd.edu on September 17, 2026.

Elsewhere, conversations and collaborations brought fresh momentum to Notre Dame’s academic partnerships and global work. In Santiago, a visit with UC Chile leaders reinforced the importance of a longstanding institutional partnership, while meetings in South Korea and India sparked discussions regarding future collaboration. Scholars and practitioners gathered in London to consider democratic governance, and a Notre Dame delegation joined Catholic university leaders in Germany to explore higher education’s responsibilities to the common good. From Dublin students’ work with a historic library collection to iSURE participants celebrating a summer of research, these exchanges offer a glimpse of what’s ahead for Notre Dame’s global network this academic year.

Rome

The fall semester students arrived at Notre Dame Rome, ready to begin their study abroad adventure in the Eternal City. The academic center welcomed 137 students across six programs, including 23 Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) students, 33 Rome Undergraduate Program (RUP) students, three Rome International Scholars (RIS), 62 third-year architecture students in the Rome Studies Program, four Notre Dame Rome Dissertation Research Fellows, and 12 architecture graduate students.

Jerusalem

Notre Dame Jerusalem kicked off the ADAM Pre-College Gap Year Program with an orientation for its new cohort of 23 participants, selected through the academic center's rigorous admissions process. Through the program, participants will gain skills to navigate their academic and professional futures confidently, prepare for academic success at top colleges and universities, become proficient in digital literacy and computer coding, and benefit from exposure to Notre Dame’s diverse network of academics, practitioners, and mentors.

Santiago

Alongside the Notre Dame Santiago team, Michael Pippenger, vice president and associate provost for internationalization, visited Santiago to meet with leaders from UC Chile and further strengthen the institutions’ partnership and shared commitment. The visit marked Pippenger’s first in-person meetings with Juan Carlos de la Llera, UC Chile’s president since March 2025, and María Montt, vice president for international relations.

Mexico

Notre Dame Mexico welcomed 12 pre-health students from the fall 2026 study abroad cohort to Puebla. During the semester, they’ll take courses at Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP)—a private, Catholic university dedicated to forming transformation-minded leaders through an educational model rooted in humanist values and the common good—while participating in research, clinical rotations, and internships.

London

Notre Dame London hosted the Kellogg Institute’s African Governance Innovations Lab, co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative and the Franco Family Institute. This convening of leading scholars, policymakers, artists, and practitioners examined challenges and opportunities for strengthening democratic institutions and explored cutting-edge research and approaches to governance, democratic accountability, public service delivery, citizen participation, and institutional reform.

GLOBAL INNOVATION TEAM

A Notre Dame delegation joined the 3rd Consortium of Catholic Universities conference at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, where participants explored higher education’s role in advancing peace, sustainability, human dignity, and the common good. Under the theme “Building Bridges: Global Responsibility for the Common Good,” Ron Metoyer, vice president and associate provost for teaching and learning, shared Notre Dame’s approaches to the intersection of higher education and AI; Jonathan Noble, senior assistant provost for internationalization and global executive director, discussed multilateral research collaboration; and Maggie Dankert, director for academic strategy and partnerships, presented insights from an international partnership benchmarking exercise.

Beijing

Notre Dame Beijing Executive Director Jingyu Wang visited Kyung Hee University in South Korea and met with Stephen Yong-Seung Park, dean of the School of Management and director of the Institute for Peace through Commerce. The visit provided an opportunity to exchange ideas and learn more about Kyung Hee University’s academic programs and initiatives, as well as potential connections and future collaboration between Kyung Hee University and Notre Dame.

Dublin

Members of the Central Catholic Library joined the Notre Dame Dublin team for a screening of Daniel O’Connell: The Emancipator. The Central Catholic Library has served as a resource for Notre Dame students studying abroad in Dublin. Students have completed research at the library while also helping to catalog and digitize the library's collection of Catholic writing.

Global Engagement Programs

Participants in Notre Dame Global's International Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (iSURE) program celebrated eight weeks of research with a farewell gathering at Weko Beach on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Mumbai

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São Paulo

The Notre Dame São Paulo team, including Director Thaïs Pires and Program Assistant Rafaella Bonaccorsi, gathered with students Michele Jimenez and Liam Carey for a welcome lunch at Ibirapuera Park. This semester, Jimenez and Carey will study business at Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) while navigating life in Brazil's largest metropolis.

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Hong Kong

Notre Dame Hong Kong led new student send-off events in Manila, Jakarta, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. This fall, 20 students from across these locations were part of the 515 international community members welcomed to the Notre Dame campus.

This photo gallery highlights some of the valuable interactions and experiences Notre Dame faculty, staff, students, and alumni have taken part in over the past month. The selection was curated by Notre Dame Global staff working on campus and in the University's 12 global locations. View past photo essays.

The Linguistic Research and Language Teaching Innovation Forum returned to Notre Dame Beijing for its second year from July 2 to 3, 2026, building on the success of its inaugural gathering in 2025.

This year’s forum, themed “Linguistic Theory, Language Teaching and Technology Innovation,” was co-hosted by the Chinese Language Program in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Notre Dame and the School of International Chinese Language Education (SICLE) at Beijing Normal University (BNU), with operational support from Notre Dame Beijing. Generously sponsored by the Franco Family Institute at Notre Dame, SICLE at BNU, and Notre Dame Beijing, the event fostered insightful academic exchanges among international scholars on key issues in Chinese linguistics and International Chinese Language Education, with a special focus on the integration and influence of AI.

The two-day forum was chaired and moderated by Professor Jincheng Liu of the University of Notre Dame, who also served as the U.S. Vice Chair. Opening remarks were delivered by the U.S. Chair, Professor Yongping Zhu (University of Notre Dame); the Chinese Chair, Professor Liping Feng (dean of SICLE at BNU); and Ms. Jingyu Wang (executive director of Notre Dame Beijing). They extended a warm welcome to the attending experts and scholars, expressed sincere gratitude for the long-standing support from all sponsoring parties, and voiced their hopes that these in-depth exchanges would further advance academic cooperation and discipline development in the field of International Chinese Language Education.

The forum featured 16 exceptional academic presentations by renowned scholars from leading universities in China and the United States. Covering a wide range of cutting-edge domains in International Chinese Language Education—from fundamental linguistic research and cultural pedagogy to second language acquisition and AI applications—the presentations both reaffirmed the essential theoretical foundations of language teaching and actively addressed new challenges facing the field in the AI era. Attendees engaged in lively, meaningful discussions following each presentation, deepening the core themes and broadening the scope of research.

Closing remarks were delivered by Professor Chih-p’ing Chou of Princeton University and Professor Yang Zhao of Peking University, who congratulated the organizers on the forum's resounding success. They also expressed high hopes for further strengthening academic exchanges between linguists in China and the U.S., while continuously driving innovation and development in linguistic research and International Chinese Language Education.

Professor Yongping Zhu attributed the success of the forum to the high-quality academic presentations by distinguished scholars, as well as the strong support of the collaborating institutions and Notre Dame Beijing. He expressed his confidence that the forum’s distinctive approach—bringing together cutting-edge theories, pedagogical practices, and technological developments to explore issues in language research and teaching—would have a positive impact on both the linguistic and language-teaching communities.

Conducted in a hybrid format, the forum attracted over 463 registrants from 278 institutions and organizations across 28 countries and regions—spanning North America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. Attendees represented premier global institutions, including Princeton University, Stanford University, Yale University, Peking University, the University of Hong Kong, and the University of Macau, fully demonstrating the forum's international reach and significant global interest.

Originally published by Aimee Xinyu Cheng at beijing.nd.edu on September 11, 2026.

In February, 33 students from Notre Dame and Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México completed the first official ND COIL project with Ibero, focused on migration. Students from International Relations, Economics, Computer Science, and Business applied macro- and microeconomic models to global migration trends and shared their own migration stories throughout the program. The project also received support from Notre Dame Learning and Notre Dame Global. Weeks later, several Notre Dame students met their Ibero classmates in person in Mexico City, joining Migration Week activities as an extension of the work they had done together online.

This spring, a second COIL project paired 19 Notre Dame students with 15 students from Universidad Panamericana, built around language exchange: Notre Dame students studying Spanish worked alongside Universidad Panamericana students studying English, across disciplines ranging from biological sciences and neuroscience to finance and law.

Professor Eva Dziadula (Notre Dame Department of Economics) led the Ibero COIL project with Carla Pederzini, Víctor Pérez-Hernández, and Karla Valenzuela at Universidad Iberoamericana. Instructors María Alejandrina Tinta Segovia and Marcelo Morales led the Universidad Panamericana COIL at Notre Dame, along with Miguel Ángel Pino Ruesga at Universidad Panamericana.

These COIL programs mark only the beginning of multiple collaborations between Mexican universities and Notre Dame to ensure global education is part of students' educational experience.

Originally published by Norma Sofia Rivera Padilla at mexico.nd.edu on September 11, 2026.

The Agricultural Innovation Mechanism for Scale (AIM for Scale), part of the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, has received a $10 million grant from the OpenAI Foundation to help governments bring AI-powered weather services to millions of farmers across South and Southeast Asia and East Africa. The initiative connects agricultural innovation with funding to help millions of smallholder farmers adapt to climate change.

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.

Originally published by April Toler at keough.nd.edu on Sept. 10.

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

Notre Dame's Pre-College Programs bring high schoolers from around the world to campus for a preview of what college life actually is: real courses, taught by Notre Dame faculty, alongside students who've traveled from dozens of countries to sit in the same classrooms.

This year, nine Mexican students took part—one in Leadership Seminars and eight across Summer Scholars—coming from Sonora, Nuevo León, the State of Mexico, and Chihuahua, making it one of the largest and most geographically varied groups from Mexico the program has seen. Summer Scholars consists of two intensive weeks built around a single college-level course, while Leadership Seminars folds that same academic rigor into a program centered on global issues with tuition and housing covered by the University. For most participants, it's the first time they've lived away from home, taken a college course for credit, or spent two weeks fully responsible for their own schedule. What happens in that short window varies student to student, but for the Mexican students who attended, it left a mark that outlasted the two weeks and might be the beginning of something greater. Here are four of their stories.

Sebastian Nouhad Saliba Cruz, who studies at Prepa Tec Campus Santa Catarina in Nuevo León and came for the Summer Scholars program, thinks about the bonfire first. While it was a simple gathering to mark the start of the program, it allowed him to interact with students he'd never met before. Throughout the program, the counselors kept finding ways to intentionally fill the two weeks so nobody had time to feel homesick. The professors also stood out to him—they were instructors who clearly knew their subjects but also seemed to really care whether he was actually learning. His Resident Counselor was there for everything else: questions about the University and the logistics of being somewhere new.

Balbina Maria Gonzalez Ruiz is also from Monterrey; she studies at the American School Foundation, and ended up in the same Summer Scholars session as Sebastian. What she remembers most is something harder to point directly—a feeling she got early on about the community around her. The staff, she says, carried themselves in a way that made the University's reputation make sense to her, something she hadn't fully understood before arriving. It didn't take her long to trust the people in the program, and that trust turned into real friendships. Months later, she's still in touch with her roommates and the friends she made there. In her course, a professor introduced her to object design, and it stuck. She says she'd like to keep studying it, ideally back at Notre Dame. That certainty has only grown since she came back to Mexico: Balbina is now working on her Early Action application to Notre Dame, calling the two weeks she spent there the moment she knew the University was the right place for her.

Fernanda Mendoza Rangel came from Instituto México de Ciudad Juárez, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, for the Leadership Seminars program. She went in wanting to learn, and came out having learned something she didn't expect. Two weeks away from home, she says, gave her clarity about what she wants for her future that she didn't have going in. The program taught her more about herself than about any particular subject.

Isaí Alejandro Hurtado studies at Preparatoria Alfa Fundación in Monterrey—a school that works with high-achieving students from public schools, many of whom wouldn't otherwise have a clear path to an opportunity like this one. When Isaí arrived at Notre Dame, he noticed the sky first. He was impressed by how clear it looked compared to home, and how the campus's size and architecture caught him off guard. Friendships came fast for him, helped by a shared passion for the World Cup; he and the students he met from all over the world gathered to watch matches together. He ran the OutstaNDing Race at the start of the Notre Games and calls it the hardest cardio he's ever done. He built a programmable circuit board in an engineering course that he plans to keep using for robotics competitions back in Monterrey, proudly showing Notre Dame's logo. But what stuck with him the most was the service trip to Green Bridge Growers, a farm that employs adults on the autism spectrum. Isaí is on the spectrum himself, and something about the place touched him deeply: a woman named Janice told him, simply, that he had a home there. He says he'd like to go back one day. He says he'd like to come back to Notre Dame, too.

All four were on Notre Dame's campus for the same reason but came away with different things,and they were not the first Mexican students to find out the importance of Pre-College Programs. For example, Paulina Turner Castelo went through Summer Scholars in 2022, from the American School Foundation of Monterrey. Gastón Gutiérrez Yáñez did the same in 2023, also from Monterrey. Santiago Paredes León came from Mexico City's American School Foundation in 2024. All three are Notre Dame students now.

For a high schooler, two weeks can sound small next to four years of university or a lifetime of decisions still ahead. But the students who've come through Notre Dame's Pre-College Programs know those two weeks tend to do something disproportionate to their length and are more than a summer experience. This program is designed to work as a first door, a small, deliberate sample of what it's like to live on a college campus: sharing a dorm with students from other cities and countries, being responsible for your own schedule, starting to figure out independently what you actually want to study.

Sebastian found an answer in a community that showed up for him. Balbina found hers in a professor who introduced her to a subject she didn't know she needed. Fernanda found hers by stepping far enough away from home to see herself more clearly. Isaí found a place in an engineering lab and an unexpected home outside campus, places he felt like he belonged. None of them left with a finished plan. All of them left with somewhere to start, and hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will see some of them again as Notre Dame students.

Originally published by Norma Sofia Rivera Padilla at mexico.nd.edu on September 04, 2026.

His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, will formally launch “Within Your Gates: The Forum for the Universal Vocation of Jerusalem” on September 7, 2026, in partnership with Notre Dame Jerusalem, the University of Notre Dame’s academic center in Jerusalem.

The Forum is an interdisciplinary research initiative that will bring together scholars and practitioners from different faith traditions and disciplines to engage with Jerusalem's universal mission and its significance for those who reside within the Holy Land and beyond.

Led by Notre Dame Jerusalem Director Daniel Schwake, Ph.D., the Forum grows out of more than three years of close cooperation with Cardinal Pizzaballa; Asher Kaufman, director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; Clemens Sedmak, director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; Notre Dame Jerusalem; and other Notre Dame colleagues.

“One of our most important responsibilities as Christians is to discern God's call for us and to use our talents and gifts to serve Him and the world. This Forum creates a space for us to discern Jerusalem's unique vocation of bringing together peoples of many faiths to build bridges and to receive God's call to be peacemakers. I am proud that Notre Dame is working with Cardinal Pizzaballa to realize this vision of how discovering Jerusalem's vocation can lead us to knowledge of our own,” shared Rev. Gregory P. Haake, C.S.C., vice president for mission engagement and church affairs.

The Forum will produce applied interdisciplinary research rooted in Jerusalem's particular realities and oriented toward questions of daily life that resonate beyond the city and the surrounding region, exploring themes such as the theological significance of Jerusalem, the city's universal vocation, the language of conflict and reconciliation, and agency under conditions of constraint.

Cardinal Pizzaballa, who will chair the Forum’s Board of Promoters, will share his vision for the initiative at the September 7 launch event at the University’s Tantur campus. “The mission of earthly Jerusalem is to become the image and mirror of heavenly Jerusalem, a prophecy and promise of that universal reconciliation and peace which God desires for the whole human family,” he said. “It is to this mission that we must return.”

The September 7 launch event will include remarks from Cardinal Pizzaballa as well as scholars and practitioners who serve on the Forum’s Board of Promoters or the Advisory Committee.

For more information about the Forum, visit www.withinyourgates.org. Questions about the launch event can be directed to jerusalem@nd.edu.

Originally published by Notre Dame Jerusalem at jerusalem.nd.edu on September 01, 2026.

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.

Originally published by Josh Stowe at keough.nd.edu on August 25, 2026.

“Bianca is a natural fit for this project given her developing understanding of and deep enthusiasm for mechanobiology in the context of cancer,” Prof. Datta shares. As an undergraduate at Notre Dame, Bianca was an accomplished research assistant in Prof. Datta’s TIME Lab and graduated with two co-authorships on peer-reviewed publications in iScience and PNAS. She learned techniques to test the impact of physical forces on cells found in and around tumors, including immune and supportive stromal cells found in brain and breast cancers. “Now, as a graduate student, she has expanded this purview to study additional cell types in the bone marrow microenvironment, a very unique tissue niche. Bianca is tenacious and undeterred by experimental setbacks, so she was my first choice to work on this project.”

The project pulls together the disciplines of the three principal investigators (PIs) involved: Prof. Datta specializes in the mechanobiology of solid tumors; Prof. Hoey is an expert in mechanobiology, specifically in the context of bone; and Prof. Bazou’s research area focuses on hematological malignancies. For Prof. Datta, their collaboration is the key to the success of the project. “The more ideas that are represented, the more likely we are to achieve impactful science, such as improving our understanding of and treatments for cancer.” It is through this international collaboration, she says, that experts can bring alternative and complementary perspectives to research, often resulting in groundbreaking results.

In describing the scope of the project, Bianca shares, “The research aims to better understand the mechanical microenvironment within the bone marrow and what role that plays in the context of progression to multiple myeloma, otherwise known as the most common or serious type of plasma cell dyscrasia."

Being a part of the project was an exciting opportunity for Bianca for a few reasons. Firstly, although she’d studied abroad in London as an undergraduate, she’d never been to Ireland before. While the project involves equal contribution from the PIs, it was decided among the group that Bianca would spend her six months in Ireland primarily at Trinity with Prof. Hoey.

The Notre Dame Dublin team helped get her settled into the new city. “Even before I even stepped foot in Dublin, I had been in contact with Maggie [Arriola Fagan] and Robert [Black], and they've just been super helpful in guiding me through the logistics and making sure that I was able to find accommodation.” She adds, “The Notre Dame community in Dublin is strong, and I think that’s really helped ease the move here.”

Secondly, this project was a new realm of research for her. Her focus as an undergraduate researcher in Prof. Datta’s lab was on cancer biology, specifically the solid tumor mechanical stress area of things. “This feels like more of a shift into some really hardcore bioengineering,” she says. “So it's fairly new and exciting, and I know that by the end of my time in Dublin, I will have learned so many new techniques, grown as a scientist, and ultimately have a lot to bring back to my lab at Notre Dame.”

It also gave Bianca the opportunity for a unique Ph.D. program experience. “Typically, as a graduate student, you work with the same PI in the same lab for five or so years,” she shares. “I've been really blessed to have an unorthodox experience where I’m spending some time getting comfortable in the lab with my PI at Notre Dame, while also getting the chance to experience a different mentoring style, a different lab setup, and a different lab dynamic at Trinity.” She’s enjoyed the privilege of having two great mentors in Professors Datta and Hoey.

She’s also been able to encounter a different lab environment at Trinity, which has been an adjustment but one she’s grown to appreciate. “Instead of each lab having their own designated space, there's one giant shared lab space, and they encourage people from different labs to mix with others.” As a result, she shares, there’s a lot of unexpected collaboration and interaction between researchers.

What ultimately makes Trinity an excellent location and partner for research is the caliber of their lab facilities, specifically when it comes to bioengineering. “Things like 3D printing, bioprinters—all this really awesome infrastructure to be able to fabricate or manufacture anything you want, whether that be some sort of mechanical apparatus, a synthetic model, or even biomaterials. This is the perfect place to be working on developing a biomimetic model of the bone marrow.” This is one of the reasons the Naughton Fellowships Faculty Research Accelerator Grant Program exists—to allow researchers from Notre Dame and five partner universities in Ireland to explore and benefit from what each university has to offer.

But these six months working at Trinity won’t just result in new technical skills for Bianca. She is also honing her skills in other areas, such as cultural competence and emotional intelligence, that come from being an international student working in a highly international environment like Trinity’s engineering department. “Although we are in Ireland, I would say most of the department here is primarily international. So you have people from a bunch of different countries all working together on the same thing. I think that requires a different level of communication, and that’s something that makes you a better scientist.”

When she returns to campus in the spring, Bianca hopes to not only continue progressing the research project with Prof. Datta and ideally present some of it, but also share the wider lessons she’s learned from her experience with others. “As I progress in the Ph.D., I'm excited to be more of a mentor and be able to share what I've learned with the students that will come in in cohorts after me.” She’s aware that the Naughton Faculty Research Accelerator Program has granted her a unique opportunity as a first-year Ph.D. student—and she doesn’t plan on wasting an ounce of it.

Originally published by Jessie Carson at dublin.nd.edu on August 24, 2026.

Kylemore Abbey and the University of Notre Dame at Kylemore Abbey proudly marked 10 years of their partnership during the Threshold Festival, a four-day celebration of literature, music, theatre, visual art, scholarship, and hospitality in the extraordinary setting of Kylemore Abbey.

The anniversary was marked with a special presentation from the Benedictine Community of Kylemore to Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, on Thursday, July 30. The presentation commemorated the first decade of a landmark 30-year agreement between Kylemore Abbey and the University of Notre Dame, which established the University’s global campus within the historic St. Joseph’s Wing of Kylemore Castle.

Since welcoming its first students in 2016, the University of Notre Dame Kylemore has become a vibrant hub for academic study, leadership development, research, retreats, workshops, and international events, developing meaningful connections between Ireland and the Notre Dame community.

This year’s Threshold Festival, themed “The Smiling Public Figure: Wit, Satire and Irony in W.B. Yeats,” brought together leading scholars, artists, performers, and cultural partners to explore Yeats’s work and legacy through performance, conversation, and creative encounters.

Festival highlights included the launch of the visual art exhibition Threading the Threshold: Care, Craft, and Celtic Revival, and an opening banquet celebrating Connemara hospitality. The weekend also featured live music in Kylemore's Gothic Chapel, including a performance by NoCrows and an intimate unplugged set from Steve and Joe Wall of The Stunning.

Academic and cultural programming featured leading voices in Irish studies, including Oxford historian and Yeats biographer Professor Roy Foster, who delivered a lecture on humour and Yeats; Professor Clemens Sedmak, director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, who spoke on "Learning from the Benedictines: Dignity, Flourishing, and Integral Human Development"; and Yeats postdoctoral fellow Eilís Smyth, who gave a talk on Shakespeare, Yeats, and the Lyric Theatre.

A major highlight of the weekend was the Abbey Theatre’s contribution to the festival programme. The Abbey Theatre presented a panel discussion, “You Have Disgraced Yourselves Again,” reflecting on Yeats, Lady Gregory, the Irish dramatic movement, and the continuing role of Irish theatre in shaping cultural life. The Abbey Theatre also presented a staged reading of Yeats’s The Green Helmet: An Heroic Farce in the Gothic Chapel, vividly bringing Yeats’s wit, mythic imagination, and theatrical energy to life.

The festival concluded with a special black-tie evening in partnership with Wexford Festival Opera, featuring Wexford Sings: Italy Through the Eyes of Yeats. The performance paired Italian opera by composers including Verdi, Puccini, and Rossini with Yeats’s poetry, creating a distinctive conversation between music, poetry, wit, and place.

Lisa Caulfield, director of Notre Dame Kylemore, said, “It was an amazing weekend in every sense—full of beauty, laughter, conversation, music, theatre, and friendship. I feel so grateful to be surrounded by such good people and such high-calibre artists, scholars, and partners. Their generosity, talent, and spirit made Threshold a very special celebration, and a fitting way to mark 10 years of Notre Dame Kylemore.”

As part of the anniversary celebrations, the Benedictine Community presented Fr. Dowd with a commemorative gift in recognition of the enduring partnership and the shared vision that has shaped the success of the Kylemore campus over the past 10 years. The celebration also included a special anniversary Mass with the Benedictine Community, celebrated by Fr. Dowd, marking 10 years of Notre Dame’s presence at Kylemore Abbey.

Reflecting on the milestone, Kylemore Abbey and the University of Notre Dame reaffirmed their commitment to continuing this unique collaboration, which brings together academic excellence, cultural exchange, and the Benedictine values of hospitality, community, and lifelong learning.

Speaking at the celebration to mark the anniversary, Abbess of Kylemore, Mother Karol O’Connell OSB, said:

“Since the foundation of our Benedictine Community in Ypres, Belgium in 1665, education has been at the heart of our mission. Generations of girls attended our schools, and today, through our Education and Retreat Centre, we continue to make Kylemore a place of learning. Our partnership with the University of Notre Dame is another mark of this commitment to education, and we look forward to the further flourishing of this partnership.”

Fr. Dowd, said:

"We are delighted to mark 10 years of partnership between Notre Dame and the Benedictine Community at Kylemore Abbey. As a global Catholic research university, we are grateful for the ways that the partnership has deepened our connectedness to Ireland and furthered our efforts to educate in ways that build bridges across disciplines, ideas, peoples, and cultures. We are deeply grateful for the vision of Martin and Carmel Naughton and of Mother Máire Hickey OSB who made this unique partnership possible. As we celebrate 10 years, we look forward to the future in a spirit of collaboration and partnership."

We remember the late Martin Naughton, whose vision and generosity were instrumental in bringing the campus to life. In May 2026, our Research Programmes Manager, Emma Kirner, interviewed Naughton about the University of Notre Dame Kylemore. Asked to describe it, he offered the following: “Notre Dame Kylemore is a spiritual place.”

Over the next two decades, Kylemore Abbey will continue to welcome generations of Notre Dame students, scholars, faculty, alumni, and visitors to the unique Connemara estate. Through this partnership, Kylemore will continue to strengthen its role as a place of learning, reflection, cultural exchange, and global engagement.

Media Contact: Lily Mansfield, lmansfi4@nd.edu

Originally published by Lily Mansfield at kylemore.nd.edu on August 20, 2026.

In July, I presented my original research (co-authored with Professor Rohan Gudibande of Krea University, India) at the Annual Conference of the Royal Economic Society held in Newcastle, United Kingdom. Presenting my paper at this conference was a novel experience for me since it was my first time presenting the findings in front of an audience of economists, policymakers and civil society stakeholders.

The research

Our research asks a simple question with important implications: Can building better infrastructure unintentionally create new forms of conflict?

Roads are often celebrated for connecting communities, expanding markets and creating economic opportunities. But before a highway can be built, the government must first acquire land. Often this land is acquired from farming households whose land represents not only their livelihood but also their family's future.

In countries like India, where land markets are often incomplete and compensation is determined administratively rather than through market negotiations, this process can become deeply contested.

Our research findings highlight the importance of designing land acquisition policies that are both economically efficient and socially equitable. 

Using data on land acquisition conflicts and India's “Golden Quadrilateral” highway project, I examine whether districts near newly constructed highways experienced more land-related conflicts over time. I find that districts within 10 kilometers of the highway network saw a significant increase in land acquisition conflicts, while similar patterns were absent around incomplete highway projects and smaller rural roads.

The evidence suggests that conflict is driven not by infrastructure itself, but by disagreements over compensation as landowners anticipate the future value of land connected to large-scale development. These findings highlight the importance of designing land acquisition policies that are both economically efficient and socially equitable.

The conference

One of the most rewarding aspects of the conference was the chance to step outside my own research area and learn from scholars working on a diverse range of policy issues. The keynote speakers offered fresh perspectives on how economic research can help governments respond to rapid technological, political and social change.

Over three days, speakers highlighted how economics is evolving to address some of the most pressing challenges facing society. Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides (London School of Economics) opened the conference by examining how artificial intelligence is transforming labor markets, emphasizing the need for forward-looking governance to ensure that technological progress benefits workers and businesses alike. Professor Ekaterina Zhuravskaya (Paris School of Economics) explored the profound influence of the internet and social media algorithms on political outcomes, illustrating both the opportunities and risks that digital technologies pose for democratic institutions.

The Royal Economic Society Hahn Lecture by Professor Manasi Deshpande (University of Chicago) focused on the design of social safety nets, demonstrating how policy details can significantly affect access to public support and program effectiveness. Finally, Professor John Van Reenen (London School of Economics) discussed the role of industrial policy in fostering innovation, arguing that identifying and supporting high-potential industries is essential for long-term productivity and economic growth.

Complementing these keynote lectures were discussions on global inequality, monetary policy, economic data infrastructure, diversity in economics, climate policy, migration and advances in econometric methods. Together, they reinforced a common theme: Rigorous empirical research and high-quality data are indispensable for designing evidence-based policies that respond to rapidly changing economic and social challenges.

Presenting my research

I presented my paper at the political economy session of the conference. The experience was both exciting and immensely rewarding. I quickly learned that the first few minutes of a presentation are crucial: Stating the research question clearly, explaining why it matters and highlighting its contribution to the literature helped engage the audience from the outset. Equally important was having a clear narrative that connected each slide, while keeping the slides themselves simple enough to complement, rather than compete with, the presentation. The discussion that followed proved just as valuable as the talk itself, with questions and feedback offering new perspectives and ideas for strengthening the project.

Apart from my own session, the conference provided opportunities to network with scholars working on similar topics and to connect with fellow early-career researchers navigating many of the same challenges of refining research questions, developing empirical strategies and sharing their work with the academic community.

Looking back

Beyond the conference, I had the opportunity to explore the beautiful city of Newcastle, along with a short trip to London. This conference took place in the middle of the FIFA World Cup, and while I missed attending the matches in person, I was fortunate enough to be in a soccer-crazed nation. I was even able to watch the quarterfinal match of England vs. Norway (which England thankfully won) at a local pub! 

The whole trip was an extremely fulfilling experience that was academically enriching and intellectually stimulating. I am especially thankful for the opportunity to present my research at such a prestigious conference early in my academic career. It was both humbling and inspiring to share my work with established scholars, receive their feedback and become part of a broader community of researchers working to address important policy questions.

I would like to thank the audience members for their valuable feedback. I am grateful to the Keough School, the Graduate Student Government, and the Royal Economic Society for the funding assistance that allowed me to attend this conference.

Originally published by Dibya Basak at keough.nd.edu on August 20, 2026.

Notre Dame Law Professor Jimmy Gurulé, founder and director of the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic (EJC), conducted two four-hour training sessions on August 13-14 at Mexico's Directorate-General for Consular Protection and Strategic Planning, a division of the country's Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Affairs). Katie Takeuchi, staff attorney at the EJC, joined Gurulé in Mexico City to facilitate the sessions. The training covered major causes of wrongful conviction, procedures for evaluating cases for the Program for the Defense of Mexican Nationals (PDM), and an overview of the American criminal justice system. Fifteen members of Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs participated in the first day of training.

In fall 2023, Mexico's Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded the EJC a $3 million grant to administer the PDM, a program that provides legal assistance to Mexican nationals facing criminal charges or wrongful convictions in the United States. The program is essential to ensuring that Mexican nationals in the United States receive fair and effective legal representation in a political climate that is hostile to immigrants. The PDM is supported by the Directorate-General for Consular Protection and Strategic Planning, which oversees consular protection and legal assistance for Mexican nationals abroad.

In addition to the training sessions, Gurulé and Takeuchi met with Cristina Planter Riebeling, Undersecretary for North America at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Vanessa Calva Ruiz, Director General of Consular Protection and Strategic Planning.

“The PDM has attracted a high level of interest and attention within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said Gurulé.

Planter Riebeling expressed strong support for the PDM and asked how her office could further support the program and help ensure its continued success. Gurulé said Planter Riebeling described the PDM as one of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' top priority programs.

Following the meeting, Planter Riebeling wrote, “The meeting provided an opportunity to highlight the important results achieved through the program and discuss next steps.” She also expressed appreciation for the “excellent collaboration” that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has developed with Gurulé and his team.

“I'm in regular communication with Director General Vanessa Calva Ruiz and her staff on the cases that we're accepting for legal representation, giving them updates on the progress that we're making,” said Gurulé.

During their visit to Mexico City, Gurulé and Takeuchi also met with Maria Mercedes Salmon, director of Notre Dame Mexico, and Dr. Imer Flores, research professor of law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) Faculty of Law, to discuss their support for the PDM.

Gurulé and Takeuchi met with Salmon to discuss the future of the PDM and Notre Dame Law School's growing presence in Mexico. “The PDM is one of the crown jewels of Notre Dame's presence in Mexico City,” Gurulé said.

Their meeting with Flores focused on ways to further strengthen the relationship between Notre Dame Law School and the UNAM Faculty of Law, particularly through the EJC's summer internship program. This summer, two UNAM students participated in the program on Notre Dame's campus.

“Overall, I thought it was a very productive visit,” said Gurulé. “In our short two-and-a-half-year relationship with the Directorate-General for Consular Protection and Strategic Planning, we've had a really substantial caseload. The PDM is really functioning. It's being fully implemented and operating on all cylinders.”

Originally published by Arienne Calingo at law.nd.edu on August 20, 2026.