On March 1, 2024, the Nanovic Institute hosted its first Undergraduate Research Conference in European Studies, co-sponsored by the Notre Dame School of Architecture. This full-day event brought together students from across the disciplines studying Europe to share the results of their research with their peers and the Notre Dame community. The institute is already planning next year's conference and plans to make this an annual event.
Today, the institute announces the prize winners from the conference. Student presentations from across the day were evaluated and three accolades were given—a gold and silver prize, as well as an honorable mention.
Gold award: Audra Pesko
Audra Pesko received the gold award for her presentation "Can Tourism Be Created? Investigating Marseille as the 2013 European Capital of Culture."
Audra is a senior studying economics and statistics with a minor in Medieval Studies. She is from Youngstown, Ohio, and is interested in strategies for urban renewal, rebranding, and tourism. She traveled to Marseille, France, in January 2024 to study the effects and public responses of a year-long urban revitalization project. She thanks the ND Scholars’ Program and the Suzanne and Walter Scott Scholarship for funding this research.
Silver award: Chioma Oparaji
Chioma Oparaji received a silver award for her presentation "Practice and Reason: Understanding the Relationship between Byzantine Mosaics and Architectural Designs." Her research was also featured in a previous Nanovic Navigator blog.
Chioma Oparaji is a 4th-year architecture student with a minor in Italian and a concentration in furniture design. She is from Houston, Texas, and has always been interested in sacred architecture. She was first drawn to mosaics after studying the churches of the Byzantine Empire in a high school art history course. Following her interests, in the summer of 2023, after spending a year abroad in Rome, she studied the relationship between ancient Byzantine mosaic craftsmanship and the architecture of early Christian basilicas in Ravenna, Italy. In Ravenna, she participated in a five-day mosaic workshop and visited the city’s earliest Christian monuments. She is grateful to the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, and the Diana M. Sciola Endowment for Excellence for their generosity in supporting her research project.
Honorable mention: Ashley Straub
Ashley Straub received an honorable mention for her presentation "Lessons for Senior Living: community design from medieval Flanders." A version of this presentation is also accessible on the Nanovic Institute website.
Ashley Straub, class of 2024, is majoring in architecture with a concentration in historic preservation and a minor in Italian. She is from Omaha, Nebraska. During the 2023 fall break, she traveled to three cities in Belgium with support from the Nanovic Institute. She studied the béguinages, hospitals, and god houses of Bruges, Leuven, and Brussels to inform the design of her senior architectural thesis project in the spring semester.