Professor Edward J. Alam, PhD
Associate Professor at Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon, has taught full time in the Faculty of Humanities since 1996. From 1999-2004, Dr. Alam, as the university’s first full time Director of International Academic Affairs, helped the university enter into the global world of higher education. Of special mention among the projects he initiated and helped implement during his tenure as Director, are (1) the U.S. State Department's higher education partnership grant, which was awarded to NDU and Madonna University, Michigan, in 2003, and (2) the agreement with Bordeaux Business School. With respect to the former, it was the first time the US State Department awarded this particular grant to a Lebanese institution of higher education, and with respect to the latter, it was the first time NDU received a foreign student “in exchange” for an NDU student, who studied abroad. In addition to his work in the International Office, Dr. Alam initiated and directed a Metanexus LSI project, devoted to the interface between religion and science, which was awarded a supplementary grant in 2004 for its outstanding accomplishments and innovations. In spite of his administrative obligations, he managed to publish one major book and a number of articles and book reviews during his tenure as Director in important International Philosophical and Theological Journals, most notably in the International Catholic Review Communio.
In 2003, Dr. Alam was invited to deliver a Plenary address in Rome at the Second World Conference on Metaphysics, and again in Bangkok at the First Asian World Congress on Metaphysics and Mysticism. Also in 2003, Dr. Alam initiated and directed a one-week seminar project that brought together prominent intellectuals from Lebanon’s universities—bringing the proceedings to publication as editor in chief in a volume titled “God in Multicultural Society.”
In 2006, Dr. Alam was awarded a Faculty exchange fellowship from Sweden’s Uppsala University, where he taught for one month in the Faculty of Theology. He is presently supervising a translation project that grew out of a cooperation between the Metanexus LSI in Lebanon, which he still directs, and the Etruscan Local Society of the Universities of Pisa, Perugia, and della Tuscia, chaired by Prof. Lodovico Galleni of the Università di Pisa.
He is also presently working on a proposal to the John Templeton Foundation in the US that will enable him to continue working with scholars from Mofid, University in Iran, where he has been invited twice to give papers on the Catholic contribution to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Dr. Alam joins LERC as an Adjunct Research Associate to conduct research on diaspora and religion. The research shall focus primarily upon place, but not so much on the geographic space in which the dispersed groups now live, but on the dynamic and complex role that the original space, the place from which the dispersed have come, now plays in the lives of the first and subsequent generations of the original diaspora community. The aim of this project is to contribute to LERC’s research capacities, especially in the growing fields of migration and religion.
ealam@ndu.edu.lb