Berkley Center

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.

Leo D. Lefebure is the Matteo Ricci, S.J., Professor of Theology at Georgetown University and a Berkley Center faculty fellow. He is also a former Long Room Hub Fellow of Trinity College Dublin and a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago. His books include, among others, Transforming Interreligious Relations: Catholic Responses to Religious Pluralism in the United States (2020); Religion, Authority, and the State: From Constantine to the Contemporary World (2016, editor); True and Holy: Christian Scripture and Other Religions (2014); The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada (2011, with Peter Feldmeier); Revelation, the Religions, and Violence (2000); and The Buddha and the Christ (1993). Lefebure is  a research fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a trustee emeritus of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, and a former president of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. He has previously taught classes supported through the Berkley Center's Doyle Seminars project. He obtained his STL from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Until his death in September 2019, Gerard Mannion was the Joseph and Winifred Amaturo Chair in Catholic Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and a senior research fellow at the Berkley Center, where his work focused on the role of the church in the world, on social ethics, and on ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Mannion published widely in the fields of ecclesiology, ethics, and public theology, as well as in other fields of systematic theology and philosophy. He was the founding chair of the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network and president of the International Network of Societies for Catholic Theology (2017-2020). His numerous books included Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism: Evangelii Gaudium and the Papal Agenda (2017), Where We Dwell in Common: Pathways for Dialogue in the 21st Century (ed., 2015), The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church (2008, ed. with Lewis Mudge), Catholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical Explorations (2007, co-edited with Philomena Cullen and Bernard Hoose), Ecclesiology and Postmodernity: Questions for the Church in Our Times (2007), and Schopenhauer, Religion and Modernity (2003). He was also editor of the Bloomsbury Publishing series "Ecclesiological Investigations" and series editor, with Oxford University’s Mark Chapman, of Palgrave Macmillan’s “Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue” series.

Katherine Marshall, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, leads the center’s work on religion and global development. She is also a professor of the practice of development, conflict, and religion in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching diverse courses on the ethics of development work and mentoring students at many levels. She helped to create and now serves as the executive director of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, an NGO that works to enhance bridges between different sectors and institutions. In September 2022, she was appointed as a member of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Marshall has five decades of experience on a variety of development issues in Africa, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East, particularly those facing the world’s poorest countries; one way she shares her expertise is through her blog Faith in Action. She was a World Bank officer from 1971 to 2006, and she led the World Bank’s faith and ethics initiative between 2000 and 2006. Marshall is a member of the Working Group on Child Rights and Family Values and the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, both part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Debora Tonelli is a permanent researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (Centro per le Scienze Religiose) at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler. She is the Georgetown representative in Rome and a research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University. Tonelli is also a lecturer in religion and violence at Gregorian University and lecturer in political philosophy and philosophy and religion at Pontifical Atheneum S. Anselmo. Her research and teaching focus on the interaction between politics and religion, particularly in the context of interreligious dialogue and religious violence. Since 2013, Tonelli has coordinated an interdisciplinary project on "Religions and Violence." She holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy and in theology.