Scott Appleby, the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, has announced that he will not seek reappointment when his second five-year term ends on June 30. The University is launching an international search to identify a successor.

“Scott’s leadership as founding dean of the Keough School has been simply extraordinary,” said John T. McGreevy, the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost. “Beginning the first new college or school at Notre Dame in almost 100 years is no simple task. Faculty must be appointed, students recruited, degree programs established and a mission for the school developed. In all of this Scott has excelled. His vision, tenacity and commitment to building a more global Notre Dame and a more just world have enriched us all.”

Appleby is a leading scholar of global religious movements and a professor of history who joined the Notre Dame faculty in 1994 as director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. He went on to serve as director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies for 14 years before his appointment as founding dean of the Keough School in 2014.

In this role, Appleby led the development of a mission and strategic plan for the Keough School, which seeks to advance integral human development, a holistic model of human flourishing grounded in the God-given dignity of each and every person.

During his tenure as dean, Appleby oversaw the appointments of more than 60 new faculty, including research, teaching, policy and professional practice scholars; opened a global policy office in Washington, D.C.; and launched two degree programs that complement the teaching and research of the nine interdisciplinary institutes housed within the Keough School. The public policy-oriented Master of Global Affairs program annually attracts and enrolls highly qualified students from approximately 40 countries around the world. An undergraduate major in global affairs launched in spring 2022.

“It’s been an honor to work alongside the talented and dedicated faculty, staff and students in the Keough School. With an ambitious new strategic plan to guide the school, and a new and exciting strategic framework for Notre Dame, the future is bright,” Appleby said. “I look forward in my final year as dean to working vigorously with my Keough colleagues to implement our plan, and with University leadership to ensure a smooth transition.”

At the conclusion of his time as Keough School dean, Appleby plans to continue his research and teaching as a faculty member at Notre Dame.

“The issues Scott has worked on throughout his career remain pressing,” McGreevy said. “I know he will make a meaningful contribution to those topics through his research and teaching in the years ahead.”

The author or editor of 15 books, Appleby’s publications include “The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence and Reconciliation,” “The Oxford Handbook of Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding,” and the five volumes of “The Fundamentalism Project” (University of Chicago Press), which he edited with Martin E. Marty. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and is the recipient of five honorary degrees.

The University has hired executive search firm Isaacson, Miller to lead an international search for a new dean and will soon convene a search committee as outlined in the Academic Articles.