Two University of Notre Dame Professors to Headline Annual Free Public Lectures at King’s College

John Deak, Ph.D., professor of History and Atalia Omer, Ph.D., professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and at the Keough School of Global Affairs will headline two free annual lecture events at the Burke Auditorium on Oct. 15, 2024, and Oct. 17, 2024, respectively. 

Dr. Deak is presenting “The First World War and the Birth of the Twentieth Century” on Oct. 15, 2024, at 7 p.m. as part of the annual Hesburgh lecture that is co-sponsored by the McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility and the Notre Dame Club of Hanover Township. Deak will discuss the end of the First World War, the larger trends in society and culture that it fostered, and its significance for understanding both the economic and political crises that followed.

Dr. Deak is an associate professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He specializes in the history of Modern Central Europe and the First World War. His first book, a political history of the Austrian Civil Service, received the Austrian State Prize for Social History in 2018. He is currently co-writing a book on the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in the First World War.

Dr. Omer is presenting “An Ethnography of Jewish Solidarity with Palestinians” on Oct. 17, 2024, at 7 p.m. Her research focuses on religion, violence, and peacebuilding, Palestine, Israel, Jewish studies, decoloniality and religion, and religion and politics.

She is the author of Days of Awe: Reimagining Jewishness in Solidarity with Palestinians and When Peace Is Not Enough: How the Israeli Peace Camp Thinks about Religion, Nationalism, and Justice. She is also a co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict, and Peacebuilding and a co-author of Religious Nationalism: A Reference Handbook. Omer has also published articles in various peer-reviewed journals and was awarded a 2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.

The Sabol Lecture is supported in part by Barbara Sabol, legal secretary to Honorable Max Rosenn, circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Along with other peacemakers, including King’s College faculty member, Rev. James Doyle, C.S.C., Barbara played a key role in establishing the Interfaith Resource Center for Peace and Justice in Wilkes-Barre in 1988.

The Burke Auditorium is located on the first floor of the McGowan School of Business.