Berkley Center

Elizabeth Ferris is a research professor at and director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. In 2016, she also served as the senior advisor to the UN General Assembly’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York and from 2020 to 2021 as an expert advisor to the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. Prior to joining Georgetown, she was a senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-LSE Project on Internal Displacement and spent 20 years working in the field of humanitarian assistance, most recently in Geneva, Switzerland, at the World Council of Churches. She has written extensively on humanitarian issues and has worked on issues around disaster displacement and climate migration since 2010. Her latest book—Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts (with Katharine Donato)—was published by Routledge in July 2019. Ferris is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is the Pedro Arrupe Distinguished Research Professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service; a senior fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs; and an affiliated professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. His teaching and research deal with human rights, religious and ethical responses to humanitarian crises, and religion in political life from the standpoint of Catholic social thought, theology, and the social sciences. His books include Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition (2024), Humanity in Crisis: Ethical and Religious Response to Refugees (2019), Driven from Home: Protecting the Rights of Forced Migrants (2010) The Global Face of Public Faith: Politics, Human Rights, and Christian Ethics (2003), and The Common Good and Christian Ethics (2002). He has taught often at Hekima University College in Nairobi, Kenya, and he collaborates with Jesuit Refugee Service. From 2020 to 2022 he is a distinguished research associate with the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Hollenbach is also a research associate with the Jesuit Center for Theological Reflection in Zambia. Hollenbach is a member of the Working Group on Displaced Persons and Hospitality to the Stranger, part of the Culture of Encounter Project.

Rev. Ludovic Lado, S.J., is the director of Centre d’Etude et de Formation pour le Développement (CEFOD) in N’Djamena, Chad. A native of Cameroon, he specializes in the anthropology of religion, focusing on current trends in African Catholicism. His publications include Catholic Pentecostalism and The Paradoxes of Africanization (2009); Le pluralisme religieux en Afrique (2013); and several journal articles. He is currently working on two book manuscripts: The Politics of Gender Reforms in Côte d’Ivoire (forthcoming from Notre Dame University Press) and Towards an Anthropology of African Catholicism (forthcoming from Brill). A member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), Lado holds a D.Phil. in social and cultural anthropology from University of Oxford.

Silvano Maria Tomasi is a Roman Catholic cardinal and advisor to Pope Francis on nuclear issues. Cardinal Tomasi previously served as secretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and as permanent observer to the Office of the United Nations and Specialized Agencies in Geneva. He obtained his Ph.D. in sociology from Fordham University.