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Current Team
Dr. Christie Billups
Co-Director, Peace and Justice Studies Program
Chair, Dept. of Theology, Associate Professor
Director, Gros Institute
(815) 836-5829
billupch@lewisu.edu
Dr. Elizabeth Sartell
Co-Director, Peace and Justice Studies Program
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Theology (Islamic Studies)
(815) 836-5207
esartell@lewisu.edu
Dr. Maryellen Davis Collett
Professor, Dept. of Theology (Religion & Culture)
(815) 836-5707
colletmd@lewisu.edu
Tracy Hemmingway
Communications Specialist, Peace and Justice Studies Program & Gros Institute
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Communications
(815) 588-7208
hemmintr@lewisu.edu
Founders
Dr. Christie Billups
Christie Billups, MAPS, D.Min., (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Theology, Chair of the Department, Co-Founder of Peace and Justice Studies, and Co-Founder and Director of the Br. Jeffrey Gros, FSC Institute for Dialogue, Justice and Social Action at ľ¹ÏÓ°Ôº. She has a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) from National Louis University, and a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies (MAPS) and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Christie has served in a variety of ministerial settings particularly focused on youth and incarcerated persons, serving in Cook County Jail, Chicago for 16 years.
She has created a course entitled Practicing Faithful Justice and teaches other Peace and Justice Studies-related courses, such as Global Christianity, World Religions, and Lasallian Community and Social Action.
Her areas of interest, inquiry and practice are restorative justice through Peace Circles, prison reform and abolition, pastoral care with and advocacy for marginalized persons, and dismantling racism. She is co-founder of the Peace and Justice Studies program and the Gros Institute at ľ¹ÏÓ°Ôº.
Dr. James Burke
Dr. James Burke is Professor Emeritus of Theology. He is co-founder and former co-director of the Peace and Justice Studies program, and former Associate Director of ľ¹ÏÓ°Ôº’s Br. Jeffrey Gros, FSC Institute for Dialogue, Justice, & Social Action. He holds a Master of Arts from The Divinity School, University of Chicago, and a doctorate in Christian Ethics from Loyola University Chicago. His dissertation, Crafting a Just Peacebuilding Ethic from Strategic Nonviolent Conflict and Just War Theory, was named Loyola’s “outstanding dissertation of the year” (2007).
Dr. Burke has been on the international faculty of the Lasalle Summer Program on Leadership and Global Understanding since 2017. He has served as Commitments Coordinator for the Vatican’s Laudato Si Action Platform’s Universities Working Group. His contributions are included in Just Peacemaking: The New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War (G. Stassen, ed., Pilgrim Press, 2008) and Interfaith Just Peacemaking: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives on the New Paradigm of Peace and War (S. B. Thistlethwaite, ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).