Programs
The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion is dedicated to the study of religion around the world and serves as a center of public deliberation and education through research, teaching, outreach, and interaction with religious communities and the public worldwide. To that end, the institute organizes, hosts, and participates in programs that bring together scholars, journalists, and thinkers whose research and coverage contributes to the rich, substantial, and ongoing conversation around global religion.
Religion and Global Politics across Disciplines and Publics
The conference “Religion and Global Politics across Disciplines and Publics” is the culmination of the Ansari Institute’s 2025-‘26 Global Fellows program. During the academic year, six postdoctoral scholars shared their books-in-progress with a team of mentors drawn from among senior Notre Dame faculty members specializing in one or more dimensions of religion and global politics. During the course of thirteen online seminars, this group of Global Fellows and their mentors critiqued the manuscripts produced by the Global Fellows and discussed the larger theoretical, historical, cultural and political issues and themes which they raise.
The symposium will identify new insights and arguments developed in these studies, focusing, inter alia, on how transnational religions and local faith communities sustain themselves and thrive or retreat within various democratic and autocratic political contexts; the impact of government repression on religious practice and public presences; how states partner with (and sometimes instrumentalize) religions; and, what case studies of religious violence, religious conflict management and faith-based diplomacy tell us about the ubiquitous and ambivalent roles religions play in society, culture and politics .
This symposium, sponsored in part by the Notre Dame Democracy Initative, is informed by the research and scholarship of the Global Fellows and their mentors, yet it is not a book workshop, but rather a series of panels designed to stimulate rigorous debate and discussion with the assembled audience.
Utopias and Their Pursuit: A Comparative Study of East and West (Fall 2026)
Major religions and spiritual traditions have their own forms of utopia, which have shaped the foundational pillars of political and social values in their respective civilizations. This conference aimed to examine two utopian ideals and their practical manifestations by bringing Chinese and Catholic thought and historical experience into conversation and including philosophical and theological elaborations and critiques of utopia; policies and events guided by utopian ideals; and ways utopias inform current world discourse.
This conference, hosted by Notre Dame Beijing, was sponsored by the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Notre Dame Global, the Medieval Institute, and the Center for Applied Ethics at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Catholic-Shi'a Dialogue Project (Spring 2025)
The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion's Catholic-Shi’a Dialogue Series was created to tackle global challenges at the intersection of religion, ethics, and democracy. The program promoted the goals outlined by the University of Notre Dame’s initiative on Global Catholicism, as outlined in its Strategic Framework, emphasizing a commitment to making the most meaningful contributions to questions of national and international concern. The Dialogue Series built a platform for interfaith engagement between Catholic scholars and leaders and Shi’a scholars and clerics in three key areas, each inflected by the theologies and social teachings of the respective traditions: dialogue among civilizations, geopolitical dialogue, and gender dialogue.
Ansari Book Prize Symposiums (2022, 2024, 2026)
The Ansari Institute's Book Prize highlights the work of scholars who reimagine the connection of religion and global affairs. In addition to recognizing the author of the chosen book and inviting he or she to provide a keynote talk, the Ansari institute also then invites scholars from different faith traditions to respond to the provocative ideas in each book through the lens of their own scholarly interest and faith traditions. These are organized in a series of panels.
The award is substantively well aligned with the Ansari Institute’s strategic plan. It serves as an example of what the late scholar Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once described as religion’s capacity “to be a source of systemic and structural good in a manner that is relevant to global affairs.” Beyond the recognition and generation of scholarship, the award ceremony and symposium helps the Ansari Institute build a community of like-minded scholars that includes members of diverse faith traditions and commitments.
Faith in the Story: Trialogues for Enhancing Religious Literacy (2020-2023)
In reporting religion, media professionals balance commitment to their stories with challenges of their markets. Similarly, faith leaders can find themselves caught between the prophetic and the practical aspects of their work. Academic scholars of religion strive to create new knowledge about religions that is responsible to scholarly and religious communities alike. Finally, an American public is also hungry for more and better quality media coverage of religion in public affairs. Despite their political and religious disagreements, these parties all agree on wanting more diverse and more accurate representations of religion available to the public sphere. How and why are we all still falling short of the mark?
Faith in the Story: Trialogues for Enhancing Religious Literacy, a multi-year series of workshops from the Ansari Institute, brought together media professionals, faith leaders, and scholars of religion to work together and identify solutions to these problems.
Religion Beyond Memes (October 2019)
In a world where communications are based on 280-character counts, influencer posts, and memes, how can reporters and educators effectively explain the complexities of religion? How can understanding of faith be expanded beyond generalizations and stereotypes? Can academics, practitioners, and journalists collectively change the conversation about religion? The "Religion Beyond Memes" conference explored these questions in depth.
Accomplished journalists, scholars, and thought leaders gathered at the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Washington Office to discuss the complexities of religion at a time when a cascade of social media platforms shapes how people understand and discuss faith and practice.
Inaugural Conference (October 2018)
What role does religion play in promoting the flourishing of the individual, community, and environment? How can the “metaphysical anguish and ontological delight” that allows us to “cross,” in the words of Ansari Institute Director Tom Tweed, between life stages and through space mobilize resources and structures for holistic human development? The inaugural conference for the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame, held in October of 2018, took a close look at the ambivalent role of religion in the present-day migration and ecological crises, as well as in the public discourses of media misinformation.