The co-directors of the Ethics/Religion and Society Program are Dr. Elizabeth Groppe and Dr. Kathleen Smythe who were appointed in June, 2007.

Dr. Elizabeth Groppe
(Associate Professor of Theology)
Elizabeth Groppe specializes in Catholic systematic theology. Her areas of teaching and research interest include trinitarian theology, theology and ecology, and interreligious dialogue.

Dr. Kathleen Smythe
(Associate Professor of History)
Kathleen Smythe teaches introductory African history in addition to a wide variety of upper-level courses including: African Women, History of South Africa, the U.S. and Liberia, History without Documents, and Africa Since 1945. Her first book “Fipa Families: Catholic Evangelization and Social Reproduction in Nkansi, Ufipa, 1880-1960” was published in May 2006 by Heinemann in their Social History of Africa series. This work and a series of articles related to it focused on socioeconomic changes of the colonial period, with a particular interest in the relationships Catholic missionaries and Fipa families forged. An article on the relative opportunities available to African and European women at a remote African mission station at the turn of the century entitled, “African Women and White Sisters at Karema Mission Station, 1894-1920” was published in the Journal of Women’s History in summer 2007.

Of late, she is engaged in teaching and research that examines the role of global processes in African history, particularly development aid. She is also engaged in service learning and was the trip leader for the Academic Service Learning Semester in Ghana in the spring of 2006. In the past, her introductory history courses have involved a service learning component that allowed students to learn from Africans living in Cincinnati about their cultures and places in the global economy.