John Kiess – Peacemaking from Northern Ireland to Eastern Congo

By Conor Ryan

Assistant Professor of Theology at Loyola University Maryland, John divides his time between teaching a curriculum focused on ethics, researching special projects such as the life and work of philosopher Hannah Arendt for an upcoming book, and studying what religious traditions and a religious imagination can offer when dealing with modern political, social and even military conflicts.

John is a 2004 Mitchell Scholar who received a Master's Degree in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from Queen's University, Belfast. John was impressed by the role religious leaders played as mediators between communities in Northern Ireland and he studied the contribution of the religious community to bringing about peace. His subsequent PhD dissertation into the peacemaking efforts of grassroots churches in Eastern Congo built upon his research in Northern Ireland.

John's goal is to foster and contribute to a scholarly agenda borne from and responding to urgent contemporary ethical dilemmas and problems that go beyond any one ethical or religious tradition. To this task he brings not only his own research and scholarship but also his past experience working internationally with groups such as the Evangelical Contribution on Northern Ireland and Duke University's Center for Reconciliation, which organized peace building conferences in the Great Lakes region of Africa.