Tom O'Brien, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
St. Michael's College, University of Toronto

Areas of Teaching and Research:
Professor O'Brien's approach of engaged scholarship and research activity is conducted in a way that brings theory and conceptual learning into direct contact with the day-to-day activities of actual practitioners. Influenced by the issues of homelessness, poverty and destitution, his courses and creative projects encompass themes of communal and social justice.

His commitment to social justice is inspired by what is known as the ‘preferential option for the poor’: a belief that God, through human agents, restores equality in the human family by literally undermining the structures of inequality and oppression—favoring those who matter least in these hierarchies. He believes this focus on the poorest of the poor and an enduring interest in the homeless appear to be good fits with the Vincentian identity of DePaul.

His recent publications include the books A Place of Mercy: Finding God on the Street. (Detroit, MI: Faith Alive Books, 2004) and John Courtney Murray in a Cold War Context (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004).

SAC 447
(773) 325-1283
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