Francisco Aragón
Director - Letras Latinas
A member of the Institute since 2003, Francisco Aragón is the author of the poetry collection Puerta del Sol (Bilingual Press) and editor of the anthology The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press). His poems and commentary on poetry have appeared in a range of anthologies and literary publications, including Crab Orchard Review, Chelsea, Jacket, Poetry Daily, and the website of the Poetry Foundation. He directs Letras Latinas, the Institute’s literary program, which is national in scope, from Washington DC and serves on the board of the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago. He is also the editor of Canto Cosas, a forthcoming book series from Bilingual Press featuring new Latino and Latina poets. For more information, visit http://franciscoaragon.net/

Caroline Domingo
Director of Communications
Caroline Domingo obtained her BA from the University of Cambridge and a postgraduate teaching certificate from the University of Leeds, England. Prior to joining the Institute as publications manager in 2001 she held a similar position at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame. She has also worked as a high school and college teacher and as a freelance editorial consultant.

Daniel Groody, CSC
Director - Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture
Rev. Daniel G. Groody, Director of the Institute’s Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture and Assistant Professor of Theology, has spent many years working in Latin America, particularly along the US-Mexican Border, and is the author of various books and articles which have been translated into five languages. These include Border of Death, Valley of Life: An Immigrant Journey of Heart and Spirit (2002) and Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice (2007). He is also editor of The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology (2007), and co-editor of A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration (2008). Groody holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Divinity and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, and a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union. He is also the executive producer of various films and documentaries, including Strangers No Longer and the award-winning Dying to Live: A Migrant’s Journey. He teaches courses in US Latino spirituality, globalization, Christian spirituality, and social justice and lectures widely in the United States as well as Latin America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit: http://nd.edu/~dgroody

Edwin I. Hernández
Director - Center for the Study of Latino Religion
Edwin I. Hernández became program director of the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at the Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame, in January 2002. He was previously a program officer for Religion Programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Hernández has also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Antillian Adventist University, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and as a faculty member at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

John Koval
Director of Research
John Koval is a retired associate professor of sociology from DePaul University with interests in work, immigration, inequality, and globalization. Koval received his PhD from the University of Oregon and worked on poverty and delinquency programs in Oregon before joining the sociology faculty at Notre Dame and, later, chairing the Department of Sociology at DePaul. He has authored and coauthored several research reports for the Institute including “Mexican Women in Chicago,” with Allert Brown-Gort and Timothy Ready, and “In Search of Economic Parity: The Mexican Labor Force in Chicago.” He recently edited and wrote several chapters for The New Chicago: A Social and Cultural Analysis (Temple University Press, 2006), a book dealing with urban change and globalization in Chicago within the past quarter century.

Don McNeill, CSC
Director - Center for Metropolitan Chicago Initiatives
Don McNeill, CSC, is a Senior Fellow of the Institute and a concurrent associate professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Theology. A Holy Cross priest, in 2002 he completed nineteen years as founding director of the Center for Social Concerns. After receiving his PhD in pastoral theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1971, he worked for three decades with Notre Dame students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and national and international sites to enhance experiential and community-based service and justice learning through teaching and programming. He has supported research and writing projects, including coauthoring a book, Compassion, with Henri Nouwen and Douglas Morrison. In August of 2003 Fr. Don moved to the Pilsen area of Chicago and is a member of the Institute’s Metropolitan Chicago Initiative in the area of ecclesial, pastoral, and social concerns.

Karen Richman
Director of Academic Affairs
Director - Center for Migration and Border Studies
Karen Richman, the Institute’s Director of Academic Affairs and the Center for Migration and Border Studies, is a cultural anthropologist who studies religion, migration, transnationalism, performance, gender, production and consumption. As a professor she has taught courses in anthropology, African American studies, gender studies, interdisciplinary core programs, Latino studies, and Romances languages. Her 2005 book Migration and Vodou (New Diasporas Series of the University Press of Florida) explores migration, religious experience and ritual transformation in a far-flung Haitian community. Her current research projects are a study of migration and religious conversion and an ethnographic biography of a Mexican immigrant woman. She has conducted fieldwork on American consumer culture and worked as an advocate for immigrants and migrant farm workers in the United States. Her articles have appeared in edited books on migration and in the journals Anthropology and Humanism, the Journal of Haitian Studies, Cimarron, Folklore Forum, the Journal of Religion in Africa, and the Journal of Plantation Society in the Americas.