2021-2026 Strategic Plan: Engaging Big Questions and "Peripheries" in Europe

Engaging Big Questions and “Peripheries” in Europe 2021-2026 STRATEGIC PLAN

Table of Contents 1

Our Mission

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Turning Hearts and Minds to Europe

4

The Present Moment

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In the Context of European Studies

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Strategic Goals

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Goal 1: Fostering the education and formation of students

10

Goal 2: Elevating the research profile and academic visibility of the Institute

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Goal 3: Maintaining and expanding strategic collaborations

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Goal 4: Building a vibrant intellectual community

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An Institute for “The Soul of Europe”

Nanovic Faculty Fellow Selena Anders (center) educates Notre Dame architecture students as they cross St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

Our Mission Founded in 1992 through a generous benefaction from Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies embodies their desire to support students in developing a relationship with and a deeper understanding of Europe. The Institute’s programs seek to encompass all aspects of the university experience, creating an academic community with a special focus on undergraduates.

Accordingly, the mission of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies is to strengthen Notre Dame’s presence in Europe, deepen the understanding of Europe within the Notre Dame community, and contribute to academic discourse and research on European studies.

The Nanovic Institute seeks to enrich the intellectual culture of Notre Dame by creating an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students, faculty, and visiting scholars to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, traditions, beliefs,

Robert and Elizabeth Nanovic

To pursue its mission, the Institute works to promote European studies at Notre Dame, to transform Notre Dame’s undergraduates, to professionalize its graduate students, to foster interdisciplinary and international faculty research, and to coordinate an international network in the spirit of respectful listening.

moral challenges, and institutions that shape Europe.

1

Students appreciate the view during an early morning hike to the Sacred Heart Statue on the grounds of Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Co. Galway, Ireland.

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Turning Hearts and Minds to Europe European issues are global issues, human issues. Questions about Europe are questions about the planet, our common home.

European experiences of peace and stability, migration, ecological challenges, and changing democracies, for example, intersect with global experiences of those same dynamics. The plurality of languages, cultures, histories, and identities within the European continent requires thoughtful engagement and discovery through translation.

The Nanovic Institute for European

art, policy, and scholarly work. The

Studies engages in this translation

Institute’s programs also launch

work by building bridges between

students and faculty members into

the University of Notre Dame

Europe to seek truth and to take

and Europe. The Institute creates

the University’s mission out into

a conduit between students,

the world.

scholars, policymakers, and citizens of Notre Dame and Europe to pursue big questions and advance understanding of human issues in ways that are inclusive, open-minded, and respectful. This inclusivity aims to enlarge the map for research and dialogue, encompassing both the traditional center and the peripheries of European life. To support this pursuit of knowledge and

The vision of the Institute is transformative: turning hearts and minds to Europe to create artisans of a new humanity.

As an academic unit within the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Institute fosters the integral development of global citizens committed to renewing the world in the spirit of solidarity, and respect for the dignity of each person.

solutions, the Institute facilitates interdisciplinary engagement with

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The Present Moment As an integral part of the Keough School of Global Affairs, which seeks to advance integral human development through research, policy and practice, transformative educational programs, and partnerships for global engagement, the Nanovic Institute concentrates on Europe and the ways Europe intersects with the world. The Institute’s priorities serve the Keough School through a commitment to undergraduate and graduate education, both in and beyond the classroom, through partnerships and research initiatives, and an emphasis on the humanities as a means to inform policy and the social sciences.

From left to right: Joseph Becherer, director of the Snite Museum of Art, with Austrian Ambassador Martin Weiss; students in an intensive French language training program at the Institut de Touraine in France; human rights activist Myroslav Marynonvych of Ukrainian Catholic University with Dean Scott Appleby, Keough School of Global Affairs; Nanovic Faculty Fellow Hildegund Müller with Nanovic graduate students outside of Jenkins Nanovic Halls.

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Carlos García Alayon, Ph.D. student in theology, language training in Mannheim, Germany.

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In the Context of European Studies This strategic plan sets out the Nanovic Institute’s aim to make distinctive contributions to European studies in two main areas: big questions and peripheries. These foci emerge from the Institute’s desire to deepen students’ and scholars’ understanding of Europe through the lens of integral human development.

Big questions are fundamental questions about European identities and values, meaning in politics and economics, and the history and future shared by European nations and peoples. These questions include the role of (faith) traditions in Europe, European colonialism and decolonization, Eurocentrism, racism and inequality, migration, European solidarity, emerging technologies and moral problems, ecological challenges, and Europe’s role on the world stage.

The scholarship and works of Nanovic community members seek to encompass the lived experiences of all people in Europe, including those marginalized by geography, poverty, policies of citizenship, and difference, in order to explore the humanity of those peoples and places Pope Francis has called “the peripheries” (Evangelii Gaudium 20). Fundamental to this commitment to enlarging the map and decentering the center lies the principle of human dignity, next to “the preferential option for the poor.” Scholars at the Nanovic Institute—faculty members, students, and visitors—will advance human understanding through research, scholarship, and creative works that consider a shared question:

Nanovic Institute Director Clemens Sedmak 6

What does it mean to respect the dignity of each person, especially the most disadvantaged, in Europe and the context of European studies?

Strategic Goals In keeping with the Keough School’s focus on integral human development, researchers and scholars working with the Nanovic Institute will support the University’s educational mission to cultivate in Notre Dame students “a disciplined sensibility to the poverty, injustice, and oppression,” with the aim of creating in them “a sense of human solidarity and concern for the common good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service to justice” (UND mission statement).

To fulfill this mission, the Institute has identified four main strategic goals for its 2021-2026 Strategic Plan.

Student Programs Assistant Manager Anna Dolezal (right) speaks with Notre Dame undergraduate students.

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GOAL 1

Fostering the education and formation of students The Nanovic Institute retains its focus on the education and formation of undergraduate students—through curricular offerings, events, networking, research and service opportunities. The pedagogical vision animating the undergraduate student learning experience is “bridge-building.” By closely studying Europe, its languages, cultures, societies, politics, and histories, students can build meaningful social and intellectual bridges to the continent, thereby fostering academic growth, intellectual creativity, and personal development. The Institute will intensify its efforts to enrich opportunities for undergraduate students at Notre Dame. At the same time, the Institute will invest in the support, mentoring, accompaniment, and professional development of graduate students of European studies.

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This strategic goal will be realized through four main objectives: • Create cogent, attractive, and pedagogically sound curricular offerings for undergraduate students.

• Provide academically meaningful research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, especially in Europe.

• Design educationally meaningful and professionally relevant service, internship, and networking opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, especially in Europe.

• Offer special professional development opportunities for graduate students.

Opposite: Students engage in research and service (from left to right): Lyla Senn ’23 in Malta; Alexis Kelly ’23 at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland; and Brady Stiller ‘20 at the London Global Gateway with the G.K. Chesterton archive. Above: Taylor Schmidt ’21 sketches the Acropolis of Athens, Greece.

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GOAL 2

Elevating the research profile and academic visibility of the Institute As an academic unit of a research university, the Nanovic Institute will increase its visibility and profile as a research and teaching institute and develop research projects in collaboration with individuals and institutional partners. Such collaborative, interdisciplinary, and international research projects will be designed to attract external funding and contribute to the landscape of European studies.

Left: Former German President Horst Köhler and his wife Eva speak with students during the Nanovic Forum. Right: Catherine Day, former Secretary-General of the European Commission, gives the Barrett Family Lecture in Dublin, Ireland.

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Four main objectives serve to actualize this strategic goal: • Design and coordinate specific research projects in line with the mission of the Nanovic Institute.

• Increase the research capacity of the Institute.

• Enhance the research profile of the Nanovic Institute.

• Increase the academic visibility and connectedness of the Nanovic Institute.

Xiaoyu (Laura) Qi ’19 researches for her senior thesis at the Richelieu Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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GOAL 3

Maintaining and expanding strategic collaborations Through its visiting scholar programs, the Catholic Universities Partnership, and the networks of its faculty fellows, the Nanovic Institute has built an international base of collaborators. These initiatives will be maintained and expanded. At the same time, the Institute will invest in new partnerships in Europe by collaborating on specific projects with academic and non-academic partners. Thereby, the Institute will increase Notre Dame’s presence in Europe.

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Left: Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, converses with Metropolitan Archbishop Borys Gudziak, president of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. Right: Scholars and administrators from within the Catholic Universities Partnership attend the Catholic Leadership Program at the Nanovic Institute.

This strategic goal will be realized by way of four main objectives: • Strengthen existing partnerships in Europe and enter new strategic collaborations with European partners.

• Invest in carefully selected local and regional partners.

• Expand the intellectual and social wealth of the Nanovic Institute by coordinating visits and research stays that will contribute to the mission of the Institute.

• Create meaningful relations with academic institutions dedicated to European studies (both nationally and internationally).

Lviv, Ukraine

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GOAL 4

Building a vibrant intellectual community The Nanovic Institute will continue and deepen its tradition of hospitality and intellectual discourse by fostering a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive intellectual community constituted by its faculty fellows, graduate student fellows, undergraduate students, and visiting scholars. The Institute will offer formats and fora to facilitate debate and exchange and to foster the creation of an intellectual community. It will be intentional about the exploration of big questions as well as responses to current developments, and the cultivation of a perspective on Europe that decenters the center and enlarges the map. The Institute will pay special attention to the peripheries of Europe and people on the margins, fulfilling our commitment to inclusiveness and a more diverse and nuanced understanding of what it means to be European.

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Scholars discuss the 1968 revolutions in Europe and Latin America (left) and Central and Eastern Europe 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (right) during academic conferences at the Nanovic Institute.

This strategic goal has been translated into four objectives: • Expand and deepen the community of people, with a commitment to diversity, who care about the Nanovic Institute and its mission by creating new opportunities for engagement.

• Facilitate academic exchange and research on two key areas: the intersection of “humanities” and “policy” and the intersection of “scholarship” and “the arts.”

• Facilitate discussions of “big questions” for Europe and responses to current developments in Europe.

• Facilitate intellectual discourses and intellectual community life by making the best use of the Nanovic Institute’s physical space.

Students during a Nanovic-supported fall break research trip to Paris as part of the course “Peripheries: Case Studies in Urban Phenomenology” taught by Nanovic Faculty Fellows.

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The view of Brașov, România from Mount Tâmpa by Andrei-Daniel Nicolae (Flickr).

An Institute for“The Soul of Europe” 16

We want to learn in Europe, and we want to learn from Europe.

Pope Francis, in his acceptance speech of the Charlemagne Prize in 2016, talked about “the soul of Europe” with its “creativity, genius and a capacity for rebirth.” Through inquiry, inclusion, and respectful listening, it is this “soul of Europe” that the Nanovic Institute for European Studies devotes itself to understanding more deeply.

L E A R N M O R E AT N A N O V I C . N D . E D U

Nanovic Institute for European Studies 1060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA 574-631-5253 nanovic@nd.edu nanovic.nd.edu