Environmental Studies

Kevin J. O'Brien teaches courses in Christian ethics, comparative ethics, and environmental ethics. In addition to the Department of Religion, he teaches in the International Honors and the Environmental Studies programs, with every course emphasizing the importance of thinking critically about contemporary moral issues. His research focuses on the interconnections between religious faith and social justice, human ethics and environmental concerns, scientific data and moral commitments. He wrote the essays "Toward an Ethics of Biodiversity: Science and Theology in Environmentalist Dialogue" in the volume Ecospirit (2007) and "Thinking Globally and “Thinking Locally: Ecology, Subsidiarity, and a Multiscalar Environmentalism” in The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (2008). He is also the author of a forthcoming monograph entitled An Ethics of Biodiversity: Christianity, Ecology, and the Variety of Life (Georgetown, 2010) and co-editor of the forthcoming textbook Grounding Religion, Rethinking Nature: A Field Guide to Religion and Ecology (Routledge, 2010).