Professor Tracey Rowland: 2024 Commencement Address

Professor Tracey Rowland received an Honorary Doctorate and delivered Christendom College's commencement address on May 11, 2024. Rowland hails from Australia, where she earned her primary degrees in law and government from the University of Queensland before completing a Bachelor of Letters in philosophy and a Master of Arts in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne. She later won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Cambridge University, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation. In 2001, she was appointed as Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, a position she held until 2017. While holding this position, Rowland completed a Licentiate in Sacred Theology and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology, both from the Lateran. Rowland is also the author of many books, including Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003), Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Benedict XVI (Oxford University Press, 2008), Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), Catholic Theology (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), The Culture of the Incarnation: Essays in Catholic Theology (Steubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2017), Portraits of Spiritual Nobility (New York: Angelico, 2019), and more. She was appointed to the 9th International Theological Commission in 2014 and has been honored with numerous awards, including the Archbishop Michael J. Miller Award for the Promotion of Faith and Culture, the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, and the Ratzinger Prize for theology. In 2023, she was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences.