The Ansari Institute is pleased to welcome four new faculty members into its community. Faculty “fellows” are professors at the University of Notre Dame whose academic home is within another department or school, but whose work substantially aligns with the Ansari Institute’s mission. Faculty “affiliates” are academic experts within their own field but whose employment and professional commitments are not primarily with the University of Notre Dame. Both faculty fellows and faculty affiliates contribute to building a community of like-minded scholars and to developing a “fellowship of faiths" as envisioned within the Ansari Strategic Plan.
Michael Hoffman (Fellow) is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He works in Comparative Politics, with an emphasis on religion and political behavior in the Middle East. He is the author of Faith in Numbers: Religion, Sectarianism, and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2021), which examines how religious practices interact with group interests to influence attitudes towards democracy. Hoffman received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 2016. His dissertation received the Aaron Wildavsky Award for Best Dissertation in Religion and Politics from the American Political Science Association in 2018. His work has been published in Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Behavior, Democratization, Middle East Law and Governance, and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book about the racialization of abortion attitudes in the United States. Hoffman teaches courses on comparative politics, the Middle East, and identity politics.
Xueying Wang (Fellow) is Assistant Professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Theology. Her focus is on World Religions and World Church and her research centers Catholicism in China. She specifically highlights the writings of Chinese Catholic intellectuals who have traditionally been overlooked. One particular area of interest is Chinese converts to the Catholic faith incorporated their Confucian heritage. Wang’s forthcoming book is titled Examining Similarities and Differences between Catholicism and Confucianism in 17th-Century China: The Example of Zhang Xingyao. Among the courses she has taught are Religions of Asia, Bridging Confucianism and Catholicism, and History of Christianity in China.
Anita Houck (Affiliate) is Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, Indiana), where she holds the Joyce McMahon Hank Aquinas Chair in Catholic Theology. She received her Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School and has served on the Board of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and as Vice President of the College Theology Society, from which she received the Monika Hellwig Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017. Her articles and talks cover a range of topics, especially religion and humor, vocation, and pedagogy; and she is co-editor, with Mary Doak, of Translating Religion (Orbis, 2013).
Azza Karam (Affiliate) is Professor of Religion and Development at the Faculty of Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). She is founding President and CEO of Lead Integrity, a global consultancy and management company with a roster of faith-inspired Professionals in development, Humanitarianism and Human Rights. She served as a Senior Advisor at the United Nations for two decades, as well as in several international development