Lund-Gill Chair
Dr. Craig A. Ford, Jr. named 2024–2025 Lund-Gill Chair
Dr. Craig A. Ford, Jr., assistant professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College in DePere, Wisconsin, joins Dominican University as this year’s Lund-Gill Chair in the Rosary College of Arts and Sciences.
As Lund-Gill Chair, Ford will teach an honors theology course on the liberative theologies of sex, gender and race within the Roman Catholic tradition during the spring 2025 semester, he said.
“In coming to Dominican, my hope is to show how truly wide the Catholic imagination can be when we think about some of today's most controversial issues,” Ford said. “More importantly, I hope to learn from the students how their own identities and experiences meaningfully participate in widening that imagination as well.”
At St. Norbert, Ford teaches courses in Christian ethics, race, gender and sexuality, and ecclesiology, and serves as co-director for the school’s peace and justice interdisciplinary minor.
Ford also teaches courses in Black theology at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in Louisiana, the country’s only Catholic historically Black college.
A scholar and activist, Ford leads workshops on issues of racial, sexual and gender justice, working with Catholic parishes, colleges, universities and professional organizations.
In 2022, Ford was the recipient of the Catherine Mowry LaCunga Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America, the largest professional society of theologians in the world. He also been recognized by St. Nobert College with three distinguished awards.
About the Lund-Gill Chair
The endowed Lund-Gill Chair was established in 2003 to recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of two Dominican Sisters, Candida Lund, OP, and Cyrille Gill, OP. The Lund-Gill Chair was created in order to bring to our campus individuals of the highest moral and intellectual reputation who can address themes and issues at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences and at the intersections of academia and society.
Former Lund-Gill Scholars
2023-2024: Ada Cheng (SOC/ENG). Sociology researcher and professor and social justice advocate.
2022-2023: Sandra Delgado, (THEA/ENG). Writer and performer.
2021-2022: Luis Argueta (Communication Arts and Sciences)—Guatemalan film-maker.
2020-2021: None (COVID).
2019–2020: Marion Weedermann, PhD, professor of mathematics at Dominican University
2018-2019; 2017–2018: Molly J. Giblin, PhD, instructor in the Department of History at the University of Memphis
2016–2017: Robert Calin-Jageman, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the neuroscience program, Dominican University.
2015–2016: Sr. M. Paul McCaughey, Archbishop of Chicago's Delegate for School Advancement and Advocacy.
2014–2015: Ana Castillo, internationally acclaimed creative writer, scholar, editor, and translator.
2013–2014: Tricia Rose, Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.
2012–2013: Christopher Kennedy, Chairman of Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises.
2011–2012: Eboo Patel, PhD, founder and the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core.
2010–2011: Chia-Feng Chang, PhD, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence and expert in Chinese science and medicine.
2009–2010: Father Richard Woods, OP, professor of theology and former chair of the Ekhart Society .
2008–2009: Stephen Kinzer, a prize-winning journalist with the Boston Globe and New York Times.
2007–2008: David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.
2006–2007: Leon Lederman, Nobel prize-winning physicist who was the inaugural chair.