Photo Credit: Ms. Maya Clubine

Newman Theological College is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Pablo Irizar as the College’s Academic Dean effective 1 July, 2023. He has held the endowed Kennedy Smith Chair of Catholic Studies at McGill University in Montreal since 2021 and served as the Executive Director of the Newman Centre at McGill and Coordinator of the Newman Institute of Catholic Studies since 2019. He has been a visiting professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland and an Adjunct Professor at St. Mark’s and Corpus Christi College in Vancouver, B.C.

Dr. Irizar has a Ph.D. in Theology from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is a prolific scholar having written several books including Augustine on Identity, the Image of God and the Church (Berlin: DeGruyter, forthcoming 2023); The Metamorphosis of Love: Body, Word and Free Will in On the Song of Songs by Bernard of Clairvaux (Paderborn: Brill and Fink, forthcoming 2023); Augustine on Distance, Belonging, Isolation and the Quarantined Church of Today (London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2022); and John Henry Newman on the Life of Ideas, Constructive Change, Character Development and the Limits of Progress (London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, forthcoming 2023).

The College’s President Dr. Jason West commented, “We are excited to welcome a scholar of Dr. Irizar’s stature to Newman Theological College as Academic Dean. He will bring substantial scholarly depth to the role as well as great experience from his success at growing the Catholic Studies program at McGill.”

The Academic Dean is the Chief Academic Officer of the College and is responsible for leading the faculty, delivering and developing the College’s programming and academic assessment.