Berkley Center

Thomas Banchoff is director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and serves as vice president for global engagement at Georgetown University, where he is a professor in the Department of Government and the Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Dr. John Borelli, a historian of religions and theologian, is special assistant for Catholic identity and dialogue to President John J. DeGioia of Georgetown University. Borelli has been at Georgetown University since 2004, where he teaches, manages conferences and events, coordinates dialogues, facilitates workshops, and promotes university relations with offices and institutes of the Holy See.

José Casanova is one of the world's leading scholars in the sociology of religion and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focuses on globalization, religions, and secularization. He is also professor emeritus at Georgetown University, where he previously taught in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. During 2017 he was the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the U.S. Library of Congress' John W. Kluge Center, where he worked on a book manuscript on Early Modern Globalization through a Jesuit Prism. He has published works on a broad range of subjects, including religion and globalization, migration and religious pluralism, transnational religions, and sociological theory. His best-known work, Public Religions in the Modern World (University of Chicago Press, 1994), has become a modern classic in the field and has been translated into several languages, including Japanese, Arabic, and Turkish. In 2012, Casanova was awarded the Theology Prize from the Salzburger Hochschulwochen in recognition of his life-long achievement in the field of theology. Casanova is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Rev. Andrew (Drew) Christiansen, S.J., was Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Human Development in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs from 2013 until his death in April 2022. His areas of research included nuclear disarmament, nonviolence and just peacemaking, Catholic social teaching, and ecumenical public advocacy. He was a frequent consultant to the Holy See and a member of the steering committee of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network. He also served on the Atlantic Council's Middle East Task Force and on the Holy See delegation that participated in the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons during summer 2017.

John J. DeGioia is the forty-eighth president of Georgetown University. For nearly four decades, DeGioia has worked to define and strengthen Georgetown University as a premier institution for education and research. As the first lay president of a Jesuit university he places emphasis on sustaining and strengthening Georgetown’s Catholic and Jesuit identity and its responsibility to serve as a voice and an instrument for justice. He has also been an advocate for interreligious dialogue. He continues to teach an Ignatius Seminar each fall, part of a program offering first year students the opportunity to encounter unique courses of study inspired by the Jesuit educational theme of cura personalis (“care for the whole person”). He is a member of the Order of Malta, a lay religious order of the Roman Catholic Church dedicated to serving the sick and the poor. Before becoming president, DeGioia served at Georgetown as senior vice president, responsible for university-wide operations, and dean of student affairs. DeGioia earned his B.A. and Ph.D at Georgetown University.

Mary Doak is an associate professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. Doak's research has focused on the intersection of Christianity and politics, particularly liberation and political theologies, theologies of democracy and religious freedom, the goal of human life and history from a Christian perspective, and theologies of the church. Her publications include Translating Religion (2013, co-edited with Anita Houck) and Reclaiming Narrative for Public Theology (2004), as well as various articles on public theology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. She is currently working on a book in public ecclesiology, addressing the specific challenges the twenty-first century raises for the mission of the church. She has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, and an Honors B.A. from Loyola University of Chicago.

Dennis M. Doyle is professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, where he has taught for 35 years. Doyle specializes in ecclesiology, Catholic social teaching, and ecumenism. His most recent book is The Catholic Church in a Changing World (2019).

Fr. Virgilio Elizondo is professor of Pastoral and Hispanic Theology and fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies and Kellogg Institute at University of Notre Dame. He has been a visiting professor at universities and pastoral institutes across the country and is widely regarded as the leading authority on US Latino religion. In 1997 he was awarded the Laetare Medal, the highest honor of the University of Notre Dame. Fr. Elizondo's publications include, among others, The Treasures of Guadalupe: Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States (2006, co-edited with Timothy Matovina and Allan Figueroa Deck), San Fernando Cathedral: Soul of the City (1998, co-authored with Tim Matovina), Galilean Journey: The Mexican American Promise (2000), and The Future is Mestizo: Life Where Cultures Meet (2000).