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HJI holds its Third Annual Research Day

HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership held its Third Annual Research Day Program at 7 PM on Tuesday May 14, 2024. This year’s research projects were represented by fourteen student submissions and six additional submissions from faculty and staff. Once again Dr. James Fleming, 1982 HJI Divinity Program Graduate and Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Emeritus at Colby College whose writings on the History of Science and Technology including Climate Change and Engineering have been published by Johns Hopkins University, MIT, Oxford University and Columbia University served as the Lead Judge. He was joined by HJI President Thomas Walsh , Professor Lynn Walsh, and Professor William Lay who completed the team of Judges. 

President Thomas Walsh opened the event by welcoming participants, expressing appreciation to the organizers and noting that research and publication by HJI faculty and students is central to the HJI mission and determination to serve as a “Home of Thought” for the community that it serves. Dr. Fleming delivered the keynote on the topic “Religion, Technology and the Creative Spirit.” Dr. Fleming’s lecture appreciated the effort and sacrifice of scientists, inventors, and researchers across history and it provided a unique angle on the ways in which these developments can serve as evidence that the work of the Creator and the Providence itself are confirmed by a number of the developments that he pointed to including an acute appreciation until just a few centuries ago of how the Christian understanding of humankind’s fallen state factored into humanity’s approach to historical development. 

HJI Provost Thomas Ward then introduced each research project in this year’s competition. He then turned the program back to Dr. Fleming who announced that Dr. Keisuke Noda’s project entitled “Hermeneutics as an Open, Dialogical Platform for Competing “Final Vocabularies” of Religious Communities” had been chosen as the Faculty winner and that Dr. Drissa Kone’s project “Toward a Unification Theory of Peace and Conflict” was recognized with an Honorable Mention. President Thomas Walsh and Professor Lynn Walsh then announced that Giorgio Gasperoni, a Master of Arts in Peace Studies student had been selected as the Student Winner for his “Complex Analysis of Serbia-Bosnia Herzegovina Disputes in the Western Balkan Context” and there were five additional students who received an Honorable Mention for their work:

The program was concluded by words of appreciation from Dr. Walsh, thanking everyone who participated and encouraging students and faculty alike to share their research in the academic year 2025. 

Many thanks to all of you who could join us for the program. 

For those who could not, you can access a recording of the event here.