The Third Dialogue: A Dialogue on Geopolitical Tensions
The Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion has launched a new program, the Catholic-Shi’a Dialogue Series, to tackle global challenges at the intersection of religion, ethics, and democracy. The program promotes 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 Catholic-Shi’a Dialogue Series builds 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: a "dialogue on dialogues", a dialogue on gender, and a dialogue on geopolitical tensions. The task is to center the dialogues against the background of contemporary Catholic-Shi’a perspectives on the good society, human rights, and geopolitical. The goal is to advance Catholic social teachings on contending visions of “the world as it should be.”
The Third Dialogue: A dialogue on Geopolitical Tensions will take place on Tuesday, April 15th from 9:00 am - 10:30 am (EST) with participation by invitation only. Anyone is welcome to view the conversation at the following video.
Dr. Mahan Mirza, University of Notre Dame, is a teaching Professor of Islam & Science in the Keough School of Global Affairs and Executive Director of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame. Mirza holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Texas Austin, MA from Hartford Seminary in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations, and PhD in Religious Studies from Yale University. Dr. Mirza has edited two special issues of The Muslim World and served as assistant editor of the Princeton Encyclopaedia of Islamic Political Thought.
Dr. Banafsheh Keynoush, University of Notre Dame, is a Scholar in Residence at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author, co-author and editor of four recently published books including Saudi Arabia and Iran: Friends or Foes? (2016) and The Abraham Accords: National Security, Regional Order and Popular Representation (2024). Her latest project is a forthcoming book chapter that focuses on critical discourse analysis of the Iranian Shia influence in the Middle East. Previously, she was an interpreter at a Catholic-Shia dialogue series event that convened in Europe from 2008 to 2019.
Dr. Gabriel Said Reynolds, University of Notre Dame, completed his PhD at Yale University in Islamic Studies. He is the author of The Qur'ān and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge 2010) and The Emergence of Islam (Fortress, 2012), the translator of ʿAbd al-Jabbar’s Critique of Christian Origins (BYU 2008), and editor of The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context (Routledge 2008) and New Perspectives on the Qur'ān: The Qur'ān in Its Historical Context 2 (Routledge 2011). In 2018 he published The Qurʾan and the Bible with Yale University Press and in 2020 Allah: God in the Qur'an, also with YUP. He runs a youtube channel, “Exploring the Qur’an and the Bible” that features conversations on scripture with leading scholars.
Dr. Emilia Justyna Powell, University of Notre Dame, is a Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law. She has written extensively on international law, international courts, territorial and maritime disputes, international dispute resolution, the Islamic legal tradition, and Islamic constitutionalism. Her prominent publications include an award-winning book published in Oxford University Press (2020), Islamic Law and International Law: Peaceful Resolution of Disputes, a Cambridge University Press (2011) book, Domestic Law Goes Global: Legal Traditions and International Courts (with Sara McLaughlin Mitchell), and The Peaceful Resolution of Territorial and Maritime Disputes (with Krista E. Wiegand) published in Oxford University Press. Powell has been a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, Durham University, and at the University of Copenhagen Law School, icourts Centre for International Courts. Born in Toruń, Poland, Emilia Justyna Powell received education in the University of Nicholas Copernicus (Poland), Jean Monnet Center for European Studies, the University of Cambridge, and the Florida State University.
Dr. Abbas Barzegar, Georgia State University, is a scholar at the Institute for Social Policy and Understandin and an Assistant Professor of Islam at Georgia State University. His scholarly research concerns the history of the Sunni-Shi’a conflict. He also serves as the Director of the Horizon Forum where he stewards its collaborative and stakeholder-centered research programming. He is a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations and maintains research and teaching affiliations with Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Emory University’s Masters in Development Program, and George Mason’s Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. Barzegar has years of applied research experience covering transnational Muslim civil society at the intersection of global Islamic revival and geopolitical conflict. With Richard Martin he is co-editor of the volume Islamism: Contested Perspective of Political Islam (Stanford University Press, 2009). His views have been distributed through Common Ground News and The Guardian’s Comment is Free. He received his PhD in religious studies from Emory University.