The Berkley Center offers a number of ways for students to get involved with the work of the center, including participating in fellowship programs, taking courses and conducting research through the Doyle Engaging Difference Program, and working as student assistants.
Our approach to student programs at the Berkley Center is grounded in the Jesuit value of caring for the person (cura personalis), a central tenet of the Georgetown University education. Programs are animated by the center’s mission of bringing together scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students to seek a more just and peaceful world by building knowledge and advancing cooperation through research, teaching, and dialogue.
Demonstrate global awareness, particularly interreligious and intercultural competencies, by engaging in discourse and practice on matters of political, religious, social, economic, and racial differences.
Demonstrate analytical abilities and the ability to clearly articulate well-researched issues through academic and professional mentorship of research and digital scholarship.
Illustrate interdisciplinary knowledge integration and intellectual curiosity in traditional and experiential learning spaces.
Center faculty taught courses across the Georgetown campus, from the College of Arts & Sciences and the School of Foreign Service to Georgetown Law.
The Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs program offers a minor for Georgetown Main Campus undergraduate students administered through the Berkley Center.
This year, the center supported Doyle Seminars on a wide range of subjects—from modern philosophy to anti-colonialism and disability narratives.
Over summer 2022, fellows conducted research on Jesuit educational initiatives in the United States, Portugal, and England.
The Doyle Global Dialogue provides a platform for Georgetown students to reflect on interreligious and intercultural engagement while studying abroad.
Student assistants are integral to the work of the center, where they contribute to faculty research projects and support communications and outreach efforts.
The Berkley Center administers the Religion, Ethics, and World Affairs (REWA) minor, which offers students the opportunity to reflect on faith and values across topic areas including international affairs, comparative politics, and religion in history and cultures. Learning at the Berkley Center extends far outside classroom walls through the global experiences of the Doyle Global Dialogue and our collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
This year, the REWA capstone was taught by Judd Birdsall in fall 2022 and Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., in spring 2023. The course examined the gains made under the Liberal World Order and inquired as to the possible pathways for religion and ethics to contribute in today’s swirling international environment. REWA capstone students presented their research during the Spring 2023 Student Symposium and online poster session.
Our Spring Symposium was held on April 22. The Berkley Center developed a virtual space on our student programs Hoya Paxa blog series to feature the research of REWA students from their capstone seminar (GOVT 313) on diverse topics including the role of religion in Biden’s environmental policymaking, just war theory and targeted killings, Vatican-Taiwan relations, and more. We invited Georgetown and the wider Berkley Center community to participate by commenting on the student projects in addition to attending in-person presentations on Main Campus.
Explore the Hoya Paxa blog series.
Read more about how the symposium showcases students’ interreligious and intercultural competency and intellectual curiosity.
related | Explore Berkley Center student projects.
Graduating REWA Students Slider
Thesis: “Democracy, Souls, and Blood: Conceptions of America’s Civil Religion in Recent Presidential Inaugural Addresses”
Building on prior scholarship regarding America’s civil religion, this paper used recent presidential inaugural addresses to examine a changing American ethos. The analysis focused on the conception of America’s divine legitimating mandate to be a “city on a hill” and the connection between democracy and national character in the twenty-first century.
Hear from REWA Alumni Slider
"Only now being away from the Berkley Center do I realize just how significant the Berkley Center's impact has been on my career trajectory. The Berkley Center employs many of the world's foremost scholars of religion. However, it was easy to forget this as a Georgetown student, given how accessible these individuals were to me as professors, advisors, and close personal mentors. Now, I'm a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, and many of my peers at HDS are seeking out ways to get involved with the Berkley Center as master's students. I feel so fortunate to already have an established relationship with the Berkley Center from my days as a Georgetown undergraduate. I carry lessons from the Berkley Center with me in all I do now within the realm of religious studies: the Education and Social Justice Project taught me how to conduct research with human subjects and how to interpret qualitative data; the myriad of classes I took as a REWA minor provided me with several lenses for interpreting religious movements; and the syllabus for my REWA capstone class exposed me to many of the authors that now serve as the basis for my learning in my master’s degree. Not a day goes by that I’m not reminded of something I’ve learned because of my involvement with the Berkley Center!"
Katherine Woodard (SFS'22)
Our growing alumni network connects young professionals with students in our curricular programs, allowing the Berkley Center to continue fostering these relationships and building meaningful mentorship into our model.
DGD Student Reflections Slider
SFS'24
“In Taipei, cultures of the world rest against each other. Somehow both bustling and soothing, the city is a tapestry of opposites: traditional architecture preserved by modern innovations, spiritual discipline intertwined with the rhythm of nine-to-five jobs, and individuality shining through commonality. It is hard not to fall in love.”
Inspired by the Document on Human Fraternity, in spring 2023 the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, together with the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity and the Muslim Council of Elders, piloted the Human Fraternity Dialogues, a unique platform for students from around the world to engage in meaningful conversations rooted in the principles laid out in the Document. The program assembled 109 students from around the globe, representing a vibrant spectrum of religious affiliations and cultural backgrounds. Driven by an imperative to unite people across religious, national, racial, and political lines, Georgetown University, the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, and the Muslim Council of Elders also co-hosted a one-day student conference centered on giving a voice to the next generation of global citizens. On September 19, 2022, undergraduate and graduate students gathered from 11 universities across the Washington, DC, area, representing 17 nations as well as diverse religious and cultural backgrounds.
Read more about "Building Interreligious Solidarity: A Global Student Conference."
Learn more about the Human Fraternity Dialogues.
During the spring 2023 semester, the International Association of Jesuit Universities (IAJU) completed a successful pilot of its Global Citizenship Curriculum Project. Inspired by Jesuit Superior General Rev. Arturo Sosa’s 2018 call for “education for world citizenship,” the project brings students across the global Jesuit network of 200 colleges and universities into dialogue about the meaning and practice of global citizenship. Thirty-six professors from 20 Jesuit institutions incorporated a shared Global Citizenship Course Module (readings and recorded lectures) into diverse courses ranging from Theological Anthropology to Human Rights in Africa and Sociology of the Philippines. A highlight of the project was a series of 37 online dialogues that brought together 500 students from 12 different countries to share their perspectives on global citizenship with one another. Lively discussions centered on two foundational questions: “What does global citizenship mean to you?” and “How can young people have a positive impact as global citizens?”
Elene Chkhaidze (SFS’25) was selected as the Berkley Center-Pulitzer Center international reporting fellow for summer 2023. She explored the role of religion in the Cyprus conflict. Her project centers religious leaders and visual elements to document the role religion could play in reconciliation efforts.
The Theology and Culture Community Dinner Group serves as an informal community-building space for law students and graduate students from different disciplines to exchange ideas about topics of interest. Students take turns choosing (brief) readings, sparking the discussion, and also providing an entry point for those who may not have had time to read that week. The group meets every other week at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Learn more about the Theology and Culture Community Dinner Group.
The Berkley Center and Georgetown’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies partnered during the 2022-2023 academic year to host a series of seminars on theology in Arabic. Georgetown students and faculty are invited to participate in reading Arabic theological texts in translation through these seminars, which will function as reading groups with an emphasis on exposure to theological reasoning and the personal voice of the authors from original Arabic texts. As familiarity with key topics develops, so too will familiarity with Arabic in its shared theological vernaculars across world religions: i.e., on the basis of terminology and overarching themes, and as a vehicle of personal expression.
Berkley Center faculty bring decades of scholarly and professional experience to the classroom, teaching in seven departments across the university while conducting research projects at the center. The center also supports the Doyle Seminars program, which provides undergraduate instructors with dedicated funding to develop inclusive pedagogies and engage diversity and difference in and beyond the classroom.
First-Year Seminars Slider
Senior Fellow, Berkley Center
Director, American Pilgrimage Project
The Search (IDST 010-21) sought to understand the personal search through rich accounts in literature—books in which author and reader venture forth together in order to make sense of their lives and the world around them—and the different ways a search can be framed through the art of narrative.
Hear from Our Students Slider
"Inspired by my engagement in interreligious dialogue while at the Berkley Center, I was motivated to teach abroad after undergraduate at an international university that cultivates interreligious solidarity."
Domenic De Santes (C’23)
As an entertainment journalist, understanding the intersection of race and pop culture is vital to successfully covering (and uncovering) what makes Hollywood tick. From #OscarsSoWhite to the Kardashians’ rampant cultural appropriation, JOUR 378 Pop Culture, Race, and the Media, a Doyle Seminar taught by Arienne Thompson Plourde in fall 2022, thoughtfully examined the myriad ways that race, racial identity, and racism infiltrate all aspects of entertainment.
Read more about the Pop Culture, Race, and the Media seminar.
Student Reflection on Pop Culture, Race, and the Media Slider
“I sent a ton of emails and ended up talking to someone who worked at Netflix and to an entertainment journalist. Our final project for the sports beat was on Black quarterbacks in the NFL and how academics discussed their media coverage, and I talked to a lot of academics who had worked just on this. I really enjoyed going straight to the source itself.”
Eli Kales (C'24)
2022-2023 Doyle Seminar Faculty Slider
Adjunct Lecturer, Journalism Program
Pop Culture, Race, and the Media (JOUR 378) thoughtfully examined the myriad ways that race, racial identity, and racism infiltrate all aspects of entertainment.
Faculty Reflection on Pop Culture, Race, and the Media Slider
“I like to joke that after this course, my kids will never (passively) enjoy a movie again because their minds are working overtime thinking about who’s in power (decision-makers), who’s missing (underrepresented/historically excluded), and who benefits (mostly white, mostly male studio heads) when it comes to commercial art.”
Arienne Thompson Plourde, Adjunct Lecturer, Journalism Program
After the initial three-part conversation series in spring 2021, the Doyle Conversations about Anti-Racism in Higher Education continued to bring together students, faculty, and staff at Georgetown University for four sessions during the 2022-2023 academic year. Sponsored by the Doyle Engaging Difference Program, the series invited members of the Georgetown community to share strategies and tools related to anti-racist work across campus. The Doyle Program also offered a special session as part of the Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Summer Institute (TLISI) in May 2023. Events in the series explored anti-racist work in a wide variety of settings at Georgetown, from the curriculum and classroom pedagogy to student life. In each event, leaders from across the university reflected on their anti-racist work as part of a panel discussion. By fostering critical dialogue about race in its complexity, the event series helped to advance the conversation about racial justice on campus and beyond.
The Berkley Center collaborates with Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service to support Education and Social Justice fellows, in a model of mentored research echoed throughout the center. Student assistants and visiting graduate researchers at the Berkley Center play a critical role in supporting the work of scholarship at the center.
This map highlights the 43 countries in which our Education and Social Justice fellows have conducted their research projects. Learn more about the 2023 fellows and their projects by clicking on the countries highlighted in red.
2022 Global Social Justice Research Symposium Video Player
Meet Our 2022 ESJ Fellows Slider
SFS'23
Mobile, Alabama
Craig conducted research at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. During her three weeks at Spring Hill College, a small Jesuit college, her research focused on support systems that sustain students throughout their time in college, and how those systems are influenced by the school’s Jesuit values.
Student Assistants Slider
Berkley Center student assistants are integral to the work of the center, helping us achieve our mission through their contributions to faculty research projects, as well as their support of communications and outreach efforts. Our student assistants are given meaningful, content-rich work that develops knowledge and skills that make them strong candidates as they seek internships and enter the job market.
