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Fields

The DRI is open to scholars who represent any field of study that can demonstrate its relevance to the DRI mission. While not exhaustive, this list includes:

  • Anthropology

  • Criminology/Criminal Justice

  • History

  • Law/Canon Law

  • Organizational Development/Organizational Leadership

  • Psychology/Psychiatry

  • Public Policy

  • Social Work

  • Sociology

  • Theology/Religious Studies

A Multidisciplinary Approach

The complexity of the issues of sexual abuse and healthy priesthood in the Catholic Church demands the insights of multiple fields of research, all contributing their insights and raising their questions in pursuit a more complete picture.

How IT Works

  1. The Senior Research Fellows team is made up of scholars from multiple disciplines, and from multiple perspectives within each discipline. These scholars work together to determine the DRI’s research priorities and objectives, and to call for proposals that will meet those objectives.

  2. The DRI researchers are encouraged to collaborate on individual research projects, designing studies that draw on multiple disciplines at the same time.

  3. Research projects are adopted by the multidisciplinary team of Senior Research Fellows, who all have the ability to contribute their questions and insights to the study design.

  4. While in progress, all original research projects are reviewed by the multidisciplinary team of Senior Research Fellows, ensuring that the questions and insights of the various disciplines do not get overlooked.

  5. Senior Research Fellows have access to an anonymized version of the DRI’s propriety data, collected during these original research projects. With approval of an accredited Intstitutional Review Board and the DRI’s own Board of Directors, the Senior Research Fellows may then make use of these data in their own analyses and research. In this way, data collected in a study that was principally criminological in nature (for example) may be used in a psychological or sociological study.

  6. In choosing recipients for the DRI’s external research grants, applications are reviewed by the Senior Research Fellows, who represent multiple scholarly fields. This enables the team to hold one another accountable for ensuring that, over time, diverse fields and methods are represented in the grant awards.

  7. The Journal of the Dulles Research Institute is overseen by an Editorial Board comprised of scholars from multiple fields, ensuring that the articles published represent a variety of disciplines.

  8. The DRI’s Working Groups, chaired by Senior Research Fellows and open to all dues-paying members, are organized by topic, not by discipline. Members from multiple fields are welcome to join each Working Group, allowing topics to be handled through a multidisciplinary collaboration. So, for instance, the Celibacy Working Group may involve sociologists, psychologists, and theologians all contributing the insights of their own disciplines to the questions being discussed with regard to celibacy.