Projects Archive

Ireland

This faculty grant provided funding for the Ireland Engineering Education Exploration, offering a group of undergraduate students to study engineering education in Ireland. Students toured the engineering facilities in four different Irish universities, presented research or class projects to students at these partner universities, interviewed other undergraduate students, and sat in on classes from their discipline, among many other things. This experience was organized as a replacement for the Engineering Study Abroad Summer Programs, which were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jerusalem, Israel

This faculty grant provided the final funding for a symposium at Notre Dame’s Tantur Gateway during Spring Break, bringing together medievalists (both Europeanists and Islamicists) from Notre Dame and the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies. Collaboration at this symposium offered the opportunity for Notre Dame to participate in cutting edge research informing the study of Medieval Latin Christendom with comparative insights from the Byzantine and Islamic worlds.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant co-sponsored a visit from Alexander Kulik, Professor and Chair of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the Russian and East European Studies Program and the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. Kulik is a leading Israeli scholar of Judeo-Slavica whose expertise ranges from the Byzantine and Medieval periods to the origins of East European Jewry and cultural archaeology of Slavic-Jewish interaction.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored an international conference marking the anniversary and assessing the state of John Rawls’s A Theory on Justice. This book's conclusions have been transformative in philosophy, law, economics, religious ethics, and other related disciplines. The conference attracted many intellectual luminaries, specifically in the realm of political philosophy.

Spain; France; Netherlands

This faculty grant provided funding for archival research in Spain and France for Ashley Bohrer’s current book project, Capitalism and Confinement. The book offers a Marxist-feminist analysis of how modern forms of property were formed in and through European colonization of the Americas, with important global effects inside the borders of Europe as well as in its overseas colonies.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding to Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Language and Cultures for their Summer Language Abroad program. Communicating with the Nanovic Institute, which students studying European languages applied to, the CSLC’s SLA committee decided which students to award this grant.

France

This faculty grant provided funding for archival research on religious confession and the state as well as government-sponsored cults in the wake of the French Revolution. This research supported Katie Jarvis’s book project Democratizing Forgiveness: Reconciling Citizens in Revolutionary France, which reveals how internal reconciliation within France required transforming the understanding and practice of forgiveness itself. The book argues that revolutionary methods for continuous resolution were just as important as the dramatic ruptures in establishing the enduring fabric of French and political social relations.

London, England

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to an art exhibition at the Tate Modern by the artist Sarah Sze in London. Sze’s installation, “Seamless” (1999), forms one chapter of Elyse Speaks’s current book manuscript Everyday Labors: Women, Art, and Making in the 1990s. The project was centered around documenting and photographing Sze's installation for reproduction in Speaks's upcoming book.

Notre Dame, Indiana

The emergence of Black Lives Matter movements around the world has catapulted interest in scholarship on Europe’s legacies of empire not only in former colonies but within Europe itself. There is currently a lack of literature on the significance of slavery and colonialism in the history of France itself. This faculty grant aided in funding the French translation of Sophia White’s most recent book, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana, for publication in France to spearhead new scholarship on this topic.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding the German translation of the book Thomas Mann’s War: Literature, Politics, and the World Republic of Letters. The book focuses on the WWII-era US exile of the German author Thomas Mann and on the ways in which US audiences kept alive (and ultimately shaped) an image of “genuine German culture” during the Nazi period.

United Kingdom; Italy

This faculty grant aided in funding two major research trips to Europe that were delayed or reconceived due to the pandemic. In response to COVID-19, Eileen Hunt retooled her research and reoriented her study of Mary Shelley toward the relevance of the author’s global plague novel The Last Man (1826) for both the development of post-apocalyptic literature and the political theory and social science of pandemics. Hunt’s book on this topic is titled Mary Shelley and the Spectre of Pandemic: How Her Plague Journals Generated the Uncanny Predictions of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a virtual discussion with Nabil Wakim, a journalist for the French newspaper “Le Monde” and author of L’arabe pour tous: Pourquoi ma langue est tabou en France. In his book, Wakim discusses France’s relationship with the Arabic language in the context of growing islamophobia within the country. The virtual discussion was centered around the book.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding to support need-based grants from Notre Dame undergraduate students for 2021 summer study abroad opportunities in Europe, including programs in Dublin, Greece, London, Milan, Paris, Poland, and Rome. This was a one-year opportunity precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the elimination of the Institute’s typical fall and spring break grants.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for the book Peaceful Resolution of Territorial and Maritime Disputes (co-authored with Dr. Krista E. Wiegand, University of Tennessee). The book discusses reasons why states pursue bilateral negotiations, mediation, arbitration, or international adjudication as means of resolving conflict. The book mentions important international institutions responsible for peaceful settlement located in Europe, including the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the International Tribunal for Law of the Sea.

Paris, France

This faculty grant provided funding for research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France on the French Foreign Legion’s activities in Latin America, a topic central to a chapter in Joshua Lund’s current book. The grant also provided the opportunity to continue a conversation with professors at the Institut des Haut Études de l’Amérique Latine (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3) about a range of cooperative endeavors, including research, publishing, and graduate student exchange.

United Kingdom

This faculty grant provided funding for an interdisciplinary conference exploring the complex reality of xenophobia and what role it played in medieval and early modern societies within Europe and beyond. The conference had a special focus on the domains and intersections of literature, religion, theology, politics, and history, featuring keynote speakers and panel conference papers highlighting new ways of thinking about the issue of “the stranger” in this historical context that can inform our contemporary understanding.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding a research cluster on the theme of “Modeling the Mind in the History of Philosophy.” The research cluster examines the concept of “the mind” through European philosophical tradition and its interlocutors, exploring traditional and often neglected alternative models in a three-year cycle. The research cluster will involve academic activities including international visiting speakers and colloquiums, coordinated through Notre Dame’s History of Philosophy Forum.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for the development of a history course on Nazi Germany. The course aims to go beyond the narrow histories of Germany and open the topic up to its full European dimensions.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a European speaker to visit each iteration of “Europe Through Film” (two semesters of classes). The directors, actors, writers, and producers of cinematic works are primary sources for learning about the motivations, means, and ideas behind the important films they have produced. Meeting with someone involved in European filmmaking provided an opportunity for these students and faculty to deepen their understanding of European film.

Toronto, Canada

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to the Toronto International Film Festival to attend screenings of new international releases, network with distributors, and recruit potential speakers (including directors, writers, actors, and producers). The grant also funded selections for the Nanovic’s Debartolo Performing Arts Center and Browning Cinema public screenings, as well as “Europe Through Film,” a one-credit course and film series.

Southern United States; United Kingdom

This faculty grant aided in funding a research project on the misrepresentation of Islamic law and misinformation about the Islamic faith in the United States and Europe, particularly the United Kingdom. The project juxtaposed the practice of sharia law in Muslim populations to non-Muslim perceptions regarding sharia law. The project aimed to contribute to the conversation about the place of sharia law in secular society, especially with rising anti-Islamic rhetoric and far-right parties in many European countries.

Calabria, Italy

This faculty grant provided funding for three faculty and two select graduate students to research and travel to Calabria, Italy. The research group met with local scholars, visited sites, and investigated cultural institutions dedicated to heritage development of minority languages, local histories, and archaeology.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant funded fees for screenplay competitions, professional analyses, and Writers Guild registration.

Dublin, Ireland

This faculty grant sponsored the eighth Symposium on International Marketing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), hosted by Notre Dame’s Dublin Global Gateway. The symposium, held previously in other European cities, gathers 25-30 leading academics to present their research in a collegial setting. Past symposium participants have addressed the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, responsible consumption, marketing’s role in promoting sustainable business practices, fair and ethical marketing to the poor, and more.

Assisi, Italy

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to “The Economy of Francesco” conference, an international meeting between young scholars and activists in the field of economics for which Ilaria Schnyder von Wartensee had been invited to serve as a Senior Member. The conference, convened by Pope Francis, aimed at studying and creating an economy “that brings life not death, one that is inclusive and not exclusive, humane and not dehumanizing, one that cares for the environment and does not despoil it” (“Letter by Pope Francis for the Event ‘Economy of Francesco’ in Assisi,” Pope Francis, 2019).

Copenhagen, Denmark

Many nations in the European Union are beginning to combat the persistent gender pay gap through targeted policy, and one nation taking the lead is Denmark, which published the first empirical study on the efficacy of its legislation. This undergraduate spring break project investigated the qualitative and quantitative efficacy and feasibility of legislation that requires companies to report pay gap statistics, their broad and long-term implications, and potential alternatives or extensions.

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Whelan

Switzerland

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to Switzerland needed for research on John Deak’s emerging book project and making connections with local historians. The research focused on one of the last cases of Ehrennotwehr, or urgent defense of honor, before the First World War. This case occurred in Davos, Switzerland, in which an Austro-Hungarian officer challenged and later murdered a man from London who had insulted him.

Rome, Italy

This faculty grant supported a symposium recognizing the 500th anniversary of the artist Raphael’s death and his influence on European art in the succeeding centuries. The symposium was an opportunity for Notre Dame to engage with international recognition of Raphael’s death and his influence, as well as with the Roman community of European academics.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for hosting Almudena Carracedo, director of El silencio de otros. The documentary focuses on victims of the Franco regime who continue to seek justice, and it won the Goya Award for best documentary film in 2018. Carracedo attended Aguilera-Mellado’s class on Spanish film, which held a screening of her documentary and a Q&A session with her.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Anne Garland Mahler, author of the acclaimed From the Tricontinental to the Global South. Mahler engaged with faculty, graduate students, and the community through lectures, workshops, and networking events. Mahler works at University of Virginia where she is the director and founder of their Global South Studies.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a colloquium entitled “Art, Desire, & God: Phenomenological Perspectives.” The colloquium was an interdisciplinary event exploring the interrelations among art and the aesthetic experience, the multi-dimensionality of desire, and the nature of the divine in connection with the political dimensions of negotiations between religion and secular culture. The colloquium drew graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty from across the world.

Chicago, Illinois

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit to the Chicago Lyric Opera for a performance of four Beethoven sonatas by Sir András Schiff. The trip was for two classes, “German Literary and Cultural Tradition(s)” with Mark Roche and Tobias Boes’s advanced seminar on Thomas Mann’s "Doktor Faustus." The students participating gained a greater understanding of Beethoven and the German musical tradition, which occupies a central place in the German-language musical canon and was a main theme of the novel in Boes’s seminar.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding the 2020 Catholic Immigrant Integration Initiative (CIII) Conference, an annual convening of a diverse network of Catholic institutions devoted to advancing the integration, empowerment, and well-being of immigrants. The conference’s theme, “Building Communities of Belonging and Hope,” sought to address what the measure of “successful” immigrant integration should be, what explains cross-country successes and failures, and how the Catholic church can most effectively partner with agents in this process. This conference represented a significant step toward making Notre Dame an important center for the comparative study of migration and reflection on how the Catholic Church can become an agent of social solidarity.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding a conference in honor of Prof. Craig Cramer’s 40 years as a university organist. The conference consisted of three two-hour panel discussions on aspects of “Changes in the Organ World 1970-2020,” including organ building, teaching, and recital programming. The conference also hosted three one-hour recitals featuring Cramer's former students.

Connemara and Dublin, Ireland

This faculty grant provided supplemental funding for the annual AnBryce Global Immersion program to Ireland for first-year AnBryce scholars. The program is an integral part of the AnBryce spring writing and rhetoric course and provides the foundation for the intercultural communication skills, international knowledge, and global perspectives necessary for the students in the AnBryce program in their college careers and beyond.

Paris and Lourdes, France

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to Paris and Lourdes for archival research and consultations with scholars of religious history. This research project explored how scholars dealt with accounts of Marian apparitions and miraculous healings and how these scholars should address evidence about these events. The output of the project was an essay likely to be published in the “Annales du Midi,” a major journal devoted to the history of southern France.

Vatican City; Italy

This faculty grant aided in funding travel to two international conferences at which Denis Robichaud presented. It also funded manuscript research at the Vatican Library for Robichaud’s most recent book project for Cambridge University Press. Robichaud’s research focused on the philosophical dialogue and history between Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his contemporaries.

Lublin, Poland

This faculty grant provided funding for travel and expenses related to working with Bartek Jozwik. This collaboration aimed at developing economic courses at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, beginning with a two-week program with English-speaking students.

Venice, Italy

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to the Venice Biennale, a biannual international art exhibition. Individual research done at the exhibition informed “Envisioning Contemporary Europe: New Political Realities in Film, Art, and Literature.” This process also included the study of artwork in the Danish Pavilion, as well as the photographic and video exhibitions at the Russian, Croatia, French, Hungarian, and Bosnia-Herzegovinian pavilions.

Bardejov and Kosice, Slovakia

This faculty grant sponsored 12-15 London program students who served as Catholic school interns in Bardejov and Kosice, Slovakia during a weekend excursion. This experience was an opportunity for these students to critically engage with different cultures while serving the common good through Catholic education at a primary school for Roma children. The students also presented at and participated in an international conference for educators on “Excellence in Education.”

Lisbon, Portugal

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to Lisbon to continue archival research on Portuguese captives in the Barbary Coast and Muslims in Portugal. The research project sought to identify Portuguese colonial officers and slave traders captured and held in bondage in the Barbary Coast under Ottoman rule. The project aimed to understand how their years in captivity transformed their lives, whether captivity altered their understanding of the transatlantic slave trade, and how they related their experiences to the lives of African people they had previously bought and sold.

United Kingdom

This faculty grant provided funding for 4-8 students to travel to the United Kingdom, focusing on the study of Gothic architecture (both medieval and modern) and its historical relationship to the British Catholic identity.

London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Bath, England

This faculty grant provided funding for an excursion to England as part of the Historic Fashion Research course in the FTT theatre curriculum. The trip offered undergraduate students the unique opportunity to conduct empirical research on historical fashion at renowned archives and report their findings in written essays and oral presentations.

United States; Italy

This faculty grant co-sponsored a new Fratelli Tutti Fellowship with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Catholic Peacebuilding Network. The fellowship enabled Melinda Davis (ND ’19) to work as a Junior Coordinator for the Holy See’s COVID-19 Commission. The commission is a working group responsible for research on the pandemic and envisioning a post-pandemic world supported by experts in health, economic, ecology, and security.

Paris, France

Global consumers are becoming more aware of the harmful effects of mass production, and as fashion is no exception, Paris has taken its first steps to leading the sustainable revolution. This undergraduate winter break project explores the wide range of approaches, but lack of clear vision, among many boutiques in Paris. The project sought to understand how different business types are approaching this global issue.

Faculty Advisor: Sonja Stojanovic

Berlin and Potsdam, Germany

One of the most prominent architects of German history, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) had incredible influence on the neoclassical architecture of Berlin and Europe. This undergraduate winter break project examined how Schinkel’s design process changed before and after his travels through Italy to understand his approach and fill a gap in scholarship on the topic.

Faculty Advisor: Krupali Krusche

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported intensive language study for students studying European languages in Europe for 6-8 weeks during the summer of 2020. These funds were requested in an effort to widen the applicant pool for intensive language study by lowering the financial burden.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a research cluster that explores the ambiguities of migration and cross-cultural exchange in culture and daily life during multiple periods of religious, political, and cultural upheaval, particularly in the European context. This research cluster sought to answer what it means to welcome—or reject—the “stranger,” whether these strangers are enemies or friends, and whether they are our “neighbor” or a threat to our way of life.

Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate spring break project explored how the laity of Ireland has responded to the secularization of their country after a long standing association between the Catholic Church and Irish society. The project interviewed Professor Siobhan Garrigan, an expert in how theology has the ability to build bridges of communication across boundaries, and Sister Geraldine Smyth, a theological consultant to the World Council of Churches, both from Trinity College Dublin. The project compiled the information gathered in a final essay on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Kenneth Oakes

Rome, Italy

This faculty grant supported a conference on James Joyce’s novel Ulysses and its global reach, entitled “Global Ulysses.” The inaugural conference was held in Rome, where Joyce conceived and wrote most of the novel, interrogating Joyce’s themes both with European intellectuals and an “outside” speaker who represented a “non-expert’s” view.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to a Notre Dame conference on “John Ruskin: Prophet of the Anthropocene,” where Henry Weinfield presented research. The conference explored how Ruskin’s legacy continues to challenge the disciplinary divides separating art from science and ethics from economics, and how his critiques of Victorian capitalism and industrialization inform our contemporary concerns.

Munich and Stuttgart, Germany

This undergraduate spring break project investigated the efficacy and shortcomings of current job assistance and labor market integration programs in Germany for refugees. The project explored the current state of these programs through interviews with local specialists, visits to job preparation centers, and meetings with Munich-based scholars. The project sought to understand the German labor market for refugees and the challenges it presents to Germany’s economic identity for future research.

Faculty Advisor: Denise Della Rossa

Reykjavik, Iceland

This faculty grant supported travel to and attendance at the Council for European Studies’s annual conference in Iceland. Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik and Dariusz Skórczewski delivered a panel at the conference entitled “Literary Perspectives on Social Conflict in Contemporary Europe.”

Chicago, Illinois

This faculty grant supported travel to Chicago for research at the Mary Reynolds Collection in the Art Institute of Chicago. The research contributed to six chapters of Carlos Jerez-Farran’s most recent book project on the films of Luis Buñuel. This research focused on surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis, themes which characterize key aspects of Buñuel’s films.

Mġarr, Malta

Lacking lakes, rivers, or reservoirs and thus relying on groundwater and desalinization, Malta faces rapidly approaching challenges due to climate change. This undergraduate spring break project examined whether Maltese soil is negatively affected by recycled water irrigation by analyzing and comparing soil pH and nutrient levels from farms irrigated with freshwater and recycled water.

Faculty Advisor: Donna Glowacki

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported a conference on research methodologies and experiences in Rome across the humanistic disciplines, organized by the Center for Italian Studies. Involving six different departments on campus and many faculty members, the conference explored Rome as a center of gravity within the western world and a hub in international humanistic research.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for two guest speakers on the marriage plot, one of the most recognizable and accessible features of nineteenth-century novels, for the course “Formal Habits of the Victorian Novel.” This experience granted graduate students in the course the opportunity to engage with influential scholars in the field and aided them in crafting original research.

Chania, Piraeus, Syros, Mykonos, Athens, and Amaliada, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project continued independent research on the effects of microplastics in the marine environment on the food chain and public health. This project studied samples of microplastic in various cities across Greece to draw conclusions about the extent of microplastic pollution and its potential effects on the diet and public health of Greek citizens. The project considered the issues of persistent organic pollutants and the ingestion of microplastics by surface-feeding fish populations.

Faculty Advisor: Jeremy Fein

London, England

This faculty grant provided funding for graduate students to travel to London for one week of archival research. The students “adopted” a London manuscript relevant to their own interests and currently available in digital reproduction and studied it while investigating theoretical and practical issues in digital humanities codicology. The students developed a project arising from their experience with the manuscript in both virtual and physical form.

Dover, England; Calais, France; Rotterdam, Netherlands

In discussions concerning a no-deal Brexit, port cities along the English Channel have been largely overshadowed by the legal questions surrounding the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. This undergraduate winter break project investigated to what extent cities along the Channel would be affected by various models of custom checks, and whether regional governments and shipping companies have largely accounted for potential border checks. The project analyzed the scope of these potential outcomes and other negative externalities arising from a hard Brexit based on predictions from various actors in Dover, Calais, and Rotterdam.

Faculty Advisor: Susan Page

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported a course taught in the Notre Dame Summer Study Abroad Program in Paris, “Paris, Visual Capital: Cinema, Photography, Media.” The course examined the convergence of historical and societal factors in select films, photography, and novels. It discussed how works of visual art require readers, listeners, and viewers to adopt a different stance toward visual text and how this is textually a political statement. The course included discussions and on-site meetings with guest speakers.

Granada and Madrid, Spain

This undergraduate spring break project explored the setting in which Frederico García Lorica, renowned poet and playwright, lived and died in Spain as research for a film adaptation of a play co-written by the student researcher. The project sought to experience the world through the land which influenced him, gaining influence and inspiration from the same sources to better understand his life and works.

Faculty Advisor: Susanne Wengle

London, England

This faculty grant supported the fourth meeting of the Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism (EMBIC) Conference. The 2020 conference’s theme was “Popery, Politics, and Prayer,” exploring aspects and formation of the relationship between political and ecclesiastical institutions, as well as political and religious attitudes and ideas that established the historical foundations of the questions surrounding religion’s place in the secular state.

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported a course taught in the Notre Dame Summer Study Abroad Program in Paris, “Postcolonial Paris: Contemporary French Cultures in Literature and the Arts.” The course concentrates on the ways contemporary “French” cultures are reconsidered and redefined by writers and artists from outside France. The course explores novels by immigrants and second-generation immigrants, critical articles and book chapters by contemporary scholars and politicians, films, and cultural events including a ballet at the Opéra Garnier.

Lagrasse, France

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to “En blanc et noir,” a prestigious piano festival in Lagrasse, France where John Liberatore’s most recent solo would be debuted. Travel to this festival presented the opportunity to network with the European media and other professionals in the industry, such as acclaimed Spanish pianist Ricardo Descalzo, who is recording another piece by Liberatore.

Rome, Italy

This undergraduate winter break project investigated the effects the 2019 change in national government and ministerial leadership in Italy had on refugee integration in Italy. The project, consisting of interviews with key individuals, institutions, and organizations, sought to meet the need for updated literature given the significant evolution of the political environment. The information collected would later be used in a senior thesis project.

Faculty Advisor: Maurizio Albahari

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored a performance by Schola Antiqua as part of the Debartolo Performing Arts Center’s annual Presenting Series. The program, “Slavic Routes: Music from Renaissance Prague,” provided a musical tour of Renaissance Prague with selections from manuscripts and music prints dating from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a book workshop for Susanne Wengle’s most recent book project, involving a small group of prominent scholars on the subject who provided feedback on the manuscript before submission for publishing. The book explores Russia’s agri-food system in the twentieth century, tracking changes across agricultural policy, rural production, consumption, and human interactions with nature.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported a conference on the theories that support the use of music and performance as pedagogical tools for language learning and the practical ways to implement activities related to music and performance in the classroom. Organized by the Italian Studies division within the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the conference involved numerous presentations and a concert entitled “Mediterranean Sì, Italianità in Italy and the World.”

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported a conference organized by the Society of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, hosted by Notre Dame. This was the first conference for the Society, creating a unique opportunity for collaboration, research, and networking among specialists in medieval and renaissance philosophy. The conference was also an opportunity for Notre Dame to solidify itself as one of the world’s premier centers for the study of medieval philosophy.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a small lecture, conference, and visit from Stéphane Wrembel and his ensemble, continuing Notre Dame’s history of hosting Wrembel in the past several years with support from the Nanovic Institute. Wrembel is internationally acclaimed as a premier interpreter of Parisian “gyspy” jazz from the 1930s-1940s and guitar virtuoso. Wrembel’s visit included an appearance in Alain Toumayan’s “La Chanson française” course, luncheons with interested faculty and students, and a public performance in the Philbin Theatre.

Oslo, Norway

This undergraduate spring break project explored questions about refugees and their effects on the identity of Norwegians, considering how refugees’ experiences shape Norwegian culture, and how institutions are shaping attitudes towards these changes. The project looks at the issues through the lens of the blending of refugee/Norwegian culture through institutionalized and structural approaches, and the lens of cultural blending through unstructured socialization.

Faculty Advisor: Justin McDevitt

Ireland; Italy

This faculty grant supported a student research experience studying historic Catholic churches and structures in Ireland and Italy. The project aimed at familiarizing students with the general variables, process, and outcomes of infrastructure asset management and community impacts. The research focused on providing students with hands-on experience integrating engineering in a cultural, historical, and sustainable context.

Paris, France

This undergraduate spring break project investigated the interactions between Agnès Varda, an influential director of French New Wave, and Nathalie Sarraute, a pioneer of the nouveau roman, to analyze how their artistic accomplishments influenced each other. The project conducted archival research on primary accounts of the two artists’ relationship and works.

Faculty Advisor: Olivier Morel

Galway and Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate spring break project explored the impact of the Easter Rising of 1916 on the historiography about Irish involvement in World War I, focusing on the extent to which the Easter Rising decreased the significance of the Irish contribution to the Great War. The project included research at museums and memorials in Galway and Dublin and interviews with historians of the era.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

London, England; Rome, Italy

This undergraduate winter break project explored the relationship between art and architecture within pivotal European art museums, and, more specifically, how the European art museum model has impacted the development of the American art museum. The project analyzed the architectural characteristics of a select few of the most important art museums in London and Rome and the ways in which visitors interact with the art in the way it has been exhibited. Since European museums are historically based on the model of retrofitting palaces, factories, or other civic buildings rather than the US model of designing a museum independently, a primary question the project sought to answer is what the relative effectiveness of the European model is compared to the US model.

Faculty Advisor: Krupali Krusche

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding a two-day conference on the image of the Virgin Mary in visual art. The conference was held at the Snite Museum and featured guest speakers and gallery talk by art historians from Europe and the United States. The conference was built upon an undergraduate course taught by Prof. Robin Jensen, “The Virgin Mary in Christian Visual Art, Texts, and Traditions,” and it examined the early history, religious diversity, and global extension of Marian iconography.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding translation services for nine previously untranslated selections within a project to create a “reader” of Ferdinand Christian Baur’s works aimed at introducing his broad theological work to the Anglophone world. Baur was one of the most influential figures in nineteenth century Christian theology, with an extensive list of published writings covering a wide range of topics such as New Testament studies, church history, philosophy of religion, and the history of religion.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding suitable indexing for Robert Norton’s book being published by Mohr Siebeck in Tübingen, Germany.

Chicago, Illinois

This faculty grant provided funds for travel to the Art Institute of Chicago for Alisha Reeves’s sections of the course “Intermediate French II.” Before departing, the students studied French artists, their works, and their importance to French culture. During the trip, students toured works by French Impressionists, engaging with course material and new vocabulary—the tour was even available in French upon request.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding publication for a co-edited volume on the topic of women and work in contemporary France. The contributions for the volume tackled a wide range of work experiences from salaried work in academic, artistic, corporate, and working-class worlds to unpaid—reproductive, domestic—labor, illegal activities, and activism.

London, England; Paris, France

This graduate student project investigated the rise of new foreign “English” courts and sought to address what their rise means for the future of civil law, civil lawyers, and civil law judiciaries—namely, if these developments result in an even bigger role of English common law in European commercial transactions even as the United Kingdom departs the EU, and what risks these two-tiered justice systems create. The project involved interviews with lawyers, policymakers, and legal experts in Paris, France and London, England.

Berlin, Germany; Ankara, Turkey

This graduate student project studied the cultural nuances of Berlin and Ankara, particularly among the immigrant working class, as research for Nazli Koca’s novel A Cleaner’s Diary. The novel explores the experiences of immigrants whose national identities are seen as challenges by their new homes, uniquely focusing on the limitations of language from multiple perspectives within immigrant working class communities. The novel aims at informing the perception of new immigrants, particularly those who come from Muslim countries, in contemporary Europe—helping them integrate into new cultures without losing their own native identities.

Huelva and Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

This graduate student project examined the decentralized immigrant regularization model in Spain, considering how local governance structures irregular migrants’ opportunities for regularization. The project connected the sociological and legal studies literature on civic stratification to that of local governance to show how municipal-level policies can alleviate or exacerbate existing social and political inequalities. The project also sought to contribute to literature by focusing exclusively on non-metropolitan areas, which have been largely neglected by academics and politicians, and analyzing why analogous municipalities enact policies that are more or less inclusive of undocumented populations.

Jerusalem, Israel

In post-unification Germany, efforts to reconcile with the Holocaust have prompted intense interest in Judaism by non-Jewish Germans, especially in the academic and religious circles that were traditional bastions of Antisemitism in the nineteenth century and pre-war Germany. This graduate student project examines modern German philosemitism as part of a much older tradition that dates back to medieval Christian Hebraism, exploring the waxing and waning of this tradition over time. The project tracks the absorption of Jewish culture and religious texts into a Christian literary culture that does not include Jews.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for Notre Dame’s institutional membership to the European Consortium of Political Research. The university’s membership in ECPR benefits many social science and humanistic graduate students and faculty.

Caen, France

This graduate student project takes a renewed approach to intercultural dynamics and identity in Europe to clarify how the Church can positively interact with secular society broadly speaking and with the various socio-cultural milieus in which it operates without losing its identity. The project conducted short-term exploratory research at the archive of twentieth-century French philosopher Mikel Dufrenne (1910-1995) to gain access to unpublished materials he wrote on the subject.

Berlin, Germany

This graduate student project studied how Zazaki-speaking immigrants and their descendants build their communities through everyday life practices in Germany. The project consisted of anthropological research in the form of long-term participant observation. The research done in this project informed a dissertation which explored how group identity is expressed across nation-states among minority immigrant populations by focusing on domestic and international migration of Zazaki speakers in western Turkey and Germany.

Oslo, Norway

This Master's thesis project designed and proposed an alternative version of Oslo’s existing port design, particularly its main passenger terminal, that highlights the robust and intimate historical relationship Norway has with the sea. The project sought to combine traditional and contemporary Scandinavian design styles to meld human-made objects with the natural landscape of the area. The project aimed at designing a plan which could transform the port area into a new marine communication hub close to the beautiful northern landscapes epitomized by Oslo.

Santander, Spain

This graduate student project explored the city of Santander, Spain, the setting of Natasha Ali’s novella Santander. The novella follows the journey of a young Pakistani student who has recently moved from her hometown of Karachi to study at the prestigious Universidad de Cantabria in Santander, tackling themes of foreignness, identity, inheritance, outsider-status, and nostalgia.

Athens and Examilia, Greece

This faculty grant supported a Roma soccer team in the village of Examilia outside of Ancient Corinth, Greece. The team, which had a transformative effect on the village and its young men, had lost its primary sponsor, and needed extra funding. The team was a way for young Roma to escape the cycle of drug usage in the village and provided a way for them to integrate and be accepted in Greek society, where they have been historically ostracized.

Michiana, Indiana and Michigan

This faculty grant provided funding for the Teachers As Scholars (TAS) outreach program, which represents a dynamic vision of professional development for K-12 teachers. A vital collaboration between public and private school teachers and Notre Dame’s faculty, TAS connects the university faculty directly with nearly 200 teachers across 5 school districts in the Michiana community.

Washington, District of Columbia

This graduate student project explored documents related to Italian writer Primo Levi, a scientist and Holocaust survivor, to understand how Levi’s works are influenced by the dominant Anglophone culture of the post-war era. The project conducted archival research on early chapters of Levi’s If This is a Man at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as well as study of the presence of British prisoners in concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz.

Lviv and Kjiv, Ukraine

This graduate student project investigated questions of identity, nationalism, and geopolitics involving Ukraine and Russia, specifically to what extent the 2012 Ukrainian Language Law consolidated the Ukrainian identity. The project sought to better understand Ukrainian perspectives on identity and citizenship among the public and the government through survey/focus group data and interviews with community leaders, academics and experts, and journalists.

Faculty Advisor: James McAdams

Florence, Italy

This graduate student project examined how the religious culture of thirteenth century Florence influenced Dante, questioning how Dante absorbed this culture, and how it contributed to his intellectual formation and works. The project sought to gain a deeper understanding of the cultural environment in which Dante lived and wrote before his exile and offered a reconstruction of this religious environment in a later dissertation on the subject.

Clermont-Ferrand, France

This graduate student project undertook the process of editing, transcribing, and translating Vie de Saint-Léger, a tenth-century biography that is an early monument of French literature. The biography, which had no critical editions or translations into the English language, speaks profoundly to contemporary problems in European life, as it recounts a story of interregional migrations, their dangers, and their controversies. The project conducted archival research in Clermont-Ferrand, France on the biography to gather essential notation and letterforms often incorrectly copied and therefore mistranslated.

Elba, Italy

This faculty grant supported research for Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi’s book Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba, a work contracted for Coffee House Press’s Spatial Series project, in Elba, Italy. Able Was I Ere I Saw Elba focuses on the politics of Napoleon’s exile in Elba. The book connects Napoleon’s micro-managerial tendencies in Elba to master palindromist Georges Perec’s focused attention on the details of the everyday.

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San Patrignano, Italy

This faculty grant provided funding for students to travel to San Patrignano for research on successful addiction rehabs and integral human development and the importance of the built environment. The students studied how all elements work together for addiction rehabilitation.

North Carolina

This faculty grant supported Jelena Jankovic-Rankovic (Anthropology), as the Institute had chosen her as its participant in the National Humanities Center Summer Residency for Ph.D. students in the Humanities. Jankovic was instructed in advanced techniques in geospatial mapping to advance her teaching and research on migration in Europe.

Bremen, Germany; Amsterdam, Netherlands

This faculty grant provided funding for archival research in Bremen, Germany and Amsterdam, Netherlands on Elisabeth Markstein, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s main liaison in the West.

Connemara, Ireland

This faculty grant aided in funding the conclusion of the Dresser Project, a research project focused on western Ireland. This project combined multidisciplinary approaches to materiality and homemaking to investigate how people in rural Connemara villages sustained their communities after waves of emigration. The project investigated tangible strategies of those who remained in their homes despite the often-overwhelming adversity associated with staying amidst the tumult of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored Notre Dame’s Bengal Bouts.

The Azores, Portugal

This undergraduate fall break project studied the interaction between architecture and culture in the Azores to consider a new model of high-end travel. The project aimed at learning how cultural ignorance reinforced by enclave tourism can be combated through immersive resorts that take local culture and architectural styles into account.

Faculty Advisor: John Mellor

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported a colloquium in honor of the intellectual commitments, passions, and contributions of the late Professor Joseph A. Buttigieg, Fellow and one-time acting Director of the Nanovic Institute. The colloquium, entitled “Civil Society and the Humanities: A Colloquium in Honor of Professor Joseph A. Buttigieg,” included two seminars addressing Buttigieg’s life, interests, and contributions to teaching, our community, and the world.

London, England; Ypres, Belgium; Péronne and Verdun, France

This faculty grant provided funding for fall break travel as part of an interdisciplinary course on the First World War, entitled “The Great War and Modern Memory.” Twenty students traveled to Europe, visiting principal sites of the war and its commemoration in the United Kingdom and along the Western Front in Belgium and France, including Ypres and Verdun. Students were encouraged to think about the war from the perspective of soldiers on the front lines as they visited museums and explored the battlefields.

London, England

This undergraduate summer break project explored connections between the strategies and outcomes of British political and military responses to Cold War containment efforts at the end of British empire, focusing on the Malayan Emergency and the Mau Mau uprising as case studies. The project aimed at uncovering how the British understood these uprisings and developed their military strategies, studying what aspects of these conflicts should (or should not) be applied to modern military efforts. The project ultimately compared these conflicts to the development of American counterinsurgency and foreign policy, specifically in the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts.

Faculty Advisor: Paul Ocobock

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a concert and masterclass by world-renowned British pianist Graham Johnson and prize-winning Canadian soprano Martha Guth. Johnson is known as a critical authority on Franz Schubert, Gabriel Fauré, and many other European song composers. Their concert was part of a “roll-out” of the best musicians to inaugurate Notre Dame’s new performance spaces.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant co-supported a visit from Dr. Sabrina C. Agarwal (UC Berkeley), a preeminent scholar of bioarchaeological research on the anthropological causes and effects of changes in human skeletons over time. During her visit, Dr. Agarwal presented a public lecture on her research on Medieval Europe and feminist theoretical approaches to biographies of past peoples, and she spoke in Meredith Chesson’s “Archaeology and Gender” course.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported an interdisciplinary graduate student conference that focused on both professional and scholarly concerns surrounding interdisciplinarity itself. The conference hosted two keynote speakers.

Venice, Italy; Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to the Venice Biennale, a biannual international art exhibition. Research done at the Venice Biennale of various works of art, including Larissa Sansour’s “Heirloom,” informed James Collins’s course “Envisioning Contemporary Europe: New Political Realities in Film, Art, and Literature.” The course itself focused on how European artists capture the tensions and issues of contemporary Europe in their artwork, including issues of European integration, gender identity, and cultural heritage.

Granada and Seville, Spain

This undergraduate summer break project studied gridded towns in the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura in Spain to understand their role as precedents in colonial American urban planning. The project utilized archival data and compared these to Spanish colonies in America.

Faculty Advisor: Selena Anders

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for research on the influences from wider Europe on the Catholic churches in northern Italy.

Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for the German translation of Olivier Morel’s film Ever, Rêve, Hélène Cixous for its screening at a German film festival. The film centered around the formation of Hélène Cixous, a feminist legend, 1968 activist, playwright, and poet, examining her friendship and company along the way.

Bardejov and Kosice, Slovakia

This faculty grant sponsored 12-15 fall semester London program students who served as Catholic primary school interns in Bardejov and Kosice, Slovakia for a weekend as part of their co-curricular course “Catholic Education and the Common Good.” The students spent half a day on a cultural visit, meeting with Fr. Radoslav Lojan, faculty head of Theology for the Catholic University of Ruzomberok, gaining cultural knowledge of the surrounding area. The students also presented on their experiences at and participated in an international conference for educators on “Excellence in Education.”

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Fabienne Kanor, a French author and an important voice in current debates on migration and national identity in Europe. During her visit, Kanor gave a “Performance Talk” entitled “Another Sea to Cross,” given in a bilingual English-French version. Her presentation drew from her work as a novelist and filmmaker, delving into questions of immigration and displacement in Europe and bringing together three crucial moments that feature the two (the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the migrations of French Caribbean people to France, and contemporary migrations and asylum seekers).

Connemara, Ireland

This faculty grant supported the “Global 1776” Conference at Notre Dame’s Kylemore Abbey Global Center. The conference explored the year 1776 in global history through multiple disciplines, assessing the key events of the year and their effects on history in a setting that allows participants from disciples that seldom interact to engage in a mutual topic of interest. The conference sought to answer questions including how to connect key texts and events from the period, how to establish proper contexts, and how we should conceive the “global."

The Hague, Netherlands

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to the official launch of the new Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Diane Desierto was one of the authors for the last three years as a Member of the Drafting Team chaired by Senior Judge of the Iran-US Claims Tribunal Bruno Simma. The launch addresses the general public on the particular uses of the new Hague Rules for individuals or groups to pursue human rights claims through international arbitration against transnational business and states.

Oslo and Halden, Norway

This undergraduate spring break project explored the juxtaposition of the contrary philosophies of criminal justice and human dignity in various prison systems. The project focused on prisoner development in Norwegian prisons, particularly Halden fengsel, a prison whose model of respect, freedom, responsibility, and rehabilitation has led to marked decreases in recidivism. The research sought to understand how such a system can be introduced to the United States, and how prisoners can be treated with dignity within a criminal justice system.

Faculty Advisor: Edward Kelly

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported housing for visiting professor Christian Vassallo, a well-regarded scholar of classics, ancient philosophy, and Italian studies.

Geneva, Switzerland; Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant co-sponsored a summer internship for one student at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. This internship program through the Kroc Institute was the first of its kind, cementing the program and the university’s relationship with ICAN.

Dublin and Enniskillen, Ireland; Celbridge, Northern Ireland

This undergraduate spring break project explored the architectural style of Irish Palladianism, a subgenre of Palladianism that has received little attention. The project sought to answer what caused this Palladianism to become so popular in Ireland, how the style was adapted to the climate and culture of Ireland, and how the style functioned as a precedent for American Palladianism.

Faculty Advisors: Jonathan Weatherill, Ingrid Rowland

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Ivan Gerginov, Deputy Commissioner, Commissariat for Refugees and Migration, Republic of Serbia. Gerginov held a public lecture sharing his experiences working with refugees and migrants from the Balkan crises to the present migrant crisis in Europe. He also held personal meetings where he advised faculty members on policy outreach and the need for policy interventions.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported an annual conference between the Notre Dame Department of History and the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (BGHS). This workshop discussed precirculated graduate student dissertation proposals and chapters, providing feedback on projects and familiarizing these students with German academic culture. The conference also included excursions to cultural sites and social events in the evenings for networking and informal dialogue.

Notre Dame, Indiana

The ideas of Immanuel Kant influenced the history of Western philosophy incredibly, and his values of human autonomy and self-determination are invoked on both sides of many pressing debates in Europe today. This faculty grant supported a workshop that went to the roots of Kant’s philosophy, investigating his notions of autonomy and self-determination in the context of his theory of the self. The workshop brought together scholars on Kantian philosophy, opening new avenues for understanding Kant’s insights in contemporary terms, and generated ideas for a proposal for a larger project on the same subject.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant aided in funding unexpected expenses for the KU Leuven Conference on Neoplatonic Studies. These expenses included the translation of one of the plenary talks from French into English and necessary funds for the conference’s opening reception.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Lindsay Ceballos (Lafayette College) in the course “Russia Between East and West.” Ceballos also gave a public lecture on her current research, which examines how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s religious identity was received first as exclusive and nationalistic, and later as universalist during the Modernist period. Ceballos’s research combines political, historical, religious, and literary perspectives, which was of interest for a wide variety of faculty and served as a model of interdisciplinary thinking for students.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for 20 German and French students to view a live broadcast of operas at the Debartolo Performing Arts Center. These performances were opportunities for these students to experience the French and German languages in a meaningful context beyond their traditional classroom setting.

Vatican City; Rome, Italy; Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate fall break project compared the deep veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church with the silencing of female Catholic religious, specifically the nuns in Northern Ireland and the sisters in Rome who write for Women Church World, and survivors of sexual violence on Catholic campuses in the United States. The project sought to answer how religious institutions either inadvertently or explicitly silence the voices of survivors through forced forgiveness, exclusive policies, and victim-blaming rhetoric and practices. The project also considered how female religious leaders are reshaping the narrative and interpretation of religious text and how this feminist hermeneutical work may set the Catholic Church up to be more inclusive of female voices in the future.

Faculty Advisor: George Lopez

Rome and Florence, Italy; London, England

This undergraduate spring break project examined the interdisciplinary discussion concerning the historical, cultural, and theological aspects of dining by researching the dining culture and rituals of early-Middle Renaissance Florence. The project focused on the “non-sensorial” nature of meals, studying the physical objects, namely cutlery and dining ware, that fostered authentic depth in a typical Renaissance Florentine meal.

Faculty Advisor: Francesca Bordogna

Rome, Italy

This faculty grant sponsored a workshop entitled “Micro-experiences of Care” led by Clemens Sedmak and Ilaria Schnyder von Wartensee as part of their larger research project with the Humanitarian Corridor (est. 2017). The project builds upon the understanding of the role of religion in international affairs, including themes of migration, integration, community building, and identity, and explores whether the migration model of a Humanitarian Corridor leads to successful integration. The workshop is an important feedback tool in the spirit of intellectual integrity, acting as a forum of exchange and informing stakeholders about the research’s methodology and progress.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored a visit from Sandro Cattacin, a professor at the University of Geneva (Department of Sociology). Cattacin spoke at the Mendoza College of Business’s spring 2019 lecture series “Ten Years Hence,” presenting on European, Middle Eastern, and North African migration patterns and the Swiss national guest worker program. He also engaged with students in discussion and networked with faculty members.

Pisa and Lucca, Italy

This faculty grant provided funding for a conference organized in part by Therese Cory, entitled “Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions: Intellect, Experience, and More.” The conference, held in Pisa, Italy, was an international meeting of the Aquinas and “the Arabs” International Working Group (AAIWG). It was held from May 22, 2019 to May 25, 2019.

Reggio Calabria, Messina, and Palermo, Italy

This undergraduate summer break project investigated the post-earthquake reconstruction of Italian cities in the Calabrian region to study historical approaches to urban reconstruction and architectural restoration and methods of seismic construction. The project aimed to answer how cities should be restored after devastating earthquakes and how they could be rebuilt in a durable and sustainable manner.

Faculty Advisor: Ettore Mazzola

Trento, Vicenza, and Perugia, Italy

This undergraduate summer break project analyzed the seismic vulnerability of unreinforced masonry buildings. The project collected data on the structural integrity of over seventy-five medieval Catholic churches and prepared protection and intervention plans for these church parishes to promote public safety and preserve important components of Italian culture and heritage.

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Walsh

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a course designed to prepare students before studying abroad in either the Rome or Bologna programs. The course was organized around a program of lectures, readings, and discussions that advanced students’ cross-cultural understanding and developed their individual learning goals for their study abroad experience. Students also gained an overview of the culture and society of the country in which they would be immersed.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported a visit from Sergio Luzzatto, Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Turin and a leading scholar in modern Italian history. Luzzato’s visit to Notre Dame included lectures focusing on Primo Levi’s engagement with (and questioning of) a post-Fascist European identity in literature and politics.

Valencia, Spain

Pedro Sánchez took the Prime Minister office of Spain in 2018, aiming to make empathy toward refugees a primary concern. This undergraduate summer break project explored Spain’s transition to one of the most welcoming European countries for migrants, focusing on how public opinion and the political environment toward refugees have changed and how this affects the experiences of refugees in Spain. The project aimed to create a conversation about the intersection between a democratic government and the multidimensional effect its rhetoric has on global development.

Faculty Advisor: Ilaria Schnyder

Dublin, Ireland

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to and research in Dublin and Ballymun, Ireland during the Dublin Theatre Festival and the International Theatre Exchange sponsored by the Irish Institute for Theatre. The two events showcased Irish works and artists to global audiences in pitching sessions, discussions, and performances. The research in Ballymun recorded dialect samples from the area and charted the paths of the characters in the play “Pineapple” by Phillip McMahon.

Geneva, Switzerland; Brussels, Belgium

This undergraduate fall break project continues summer research on-site in Geneva, Switzerland and Brussels, Belgium. The project questions how European agencies, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations based in Europe are responding to the influx of refugees generally and providing for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable population—those with disabilities. The project included visits with the International Rescue Committee, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the European Commission, among others.

Faculty Advisor: George Lopez

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored a screening of the film Habemus Feminas at Notre Dame’s Browning Cinema and a discussion with filmmaker Silvan Maximilian Hohl from Switzerland. The film captures a 2016 pilgrimage of women from St. Gallen, Switzerland to Rome that demonstrated “the Catholic Church in solidarity with women” and submitted a petition to Pope Francis.

Paris, France

This undergraduate spring break project analyzes the social business environment in France, focusing on what makes them effective, how they built trust within their communities, and whether the French culture creates a more hospitable environment for these enterprises than American culture. The project looks at economic, political, and business structures in France, as well as motivations for social entrepreneurs and investors.

Faculty Advisor: Sonja Stojanovic

Paris and Lyon, France

This undergraduate fall break project continued previous research, asking whether from a high-level system view, organizations that exist to promote social business in France effectively influence entrepreneurs and foster a spirit of global community or if personal motivations are more pertinent with respect to the creation of social businesses. The project interviewed numerous organizations which act as resources for social businesses in France and Europe as a whole, including Entrepreneurs du Monde, the Yunus Centre, and l’OCDE (the OECD).

Faculty Advisor: Sonja Stojanovic

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a workshop on a manuscript of Sarah Shortall’s book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: The Politics of Catholic Theology in Twentieth-Century France. The workshop provided an opportunity for top experts and scholars in the field to comment on the manuscript before its submission to Harvard University Press. The workshop also served as a networking opportunity with some of the most respected scholars on European history in the country.

Almagro, Spain

This faculty grant provided funding for travel to Spain for a viewing of La Dama Boba (“The Daffy Dame”), a 1613 Spanish Golden Age comedy by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), at the 42nd annual Almagro International Classic Theater Festival. The viewing was part of research for a play produced by Ann Garcia-Romero that centered around a Latinx theater professor who directs La Dama Boba on her university’s campus in California, as well as other future works by Garcia-Romero. The festival also served as a networking opportunity with international theater artists and producers.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Stéphane Wrembel, a French guitarist, and his musical trio for a talk, performance, and reception in the Philbin Theatre. Wrembel is a leading figure in the French style of jazz pioneered by Belgian Sinti guitarist Django Reinhardt who has presented previous masterclasses and lectures at Notre Dame.

Leeds, England

This faculty grant provided funding for various projects in Leeds, England. These projects included an inter-faith choral pedagogy for children in Leeds, a BBC broadcast, and fostering Notre Dame’s relationship with the city and its nationally-recognized children’s program in music.

Germany

This faculty grant provided funding for two students to travel to Germany.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for the Teachers As Scholars (TAS) outreach program, which represents a dynamic vision of professional development for K-12 teachers. A vital collaboration between public and private school teachers and Notre Dame’s faculty, TAS connects the university faculty directly with nearly 200 teachers across 5 school districts in the Michiana community. The funding supported presentations for three faculty fellows.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant sponsored a workshop entitled “Quodlibetal Culture in Dante’s Time,” which considered the who, why, where, and when of the “Italian” quodlibetales. Scholars explored the topics normally discussed in Florence and other cities of medieval Italy, assessing whether the quodlibetal disputations debated in Italy were original when compared to those in Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. The workshop then considered how these questions molded or guided Dante’s study of highly specialized subjects.

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate fall break project explored the role of religion and acceptance in Greek identity and the migrant crisis that peaked in 2015. The project continues research originally done on the first public mosque in Athens (finished 2020), seeking to answer questions arising from the mosque’s opening. The project tackles questions such as whether the city’s Muslims feel that the mosque has provided them dignity, what hopes and plans Muslims have for the development of the religious body with respect to their youth, and how they seek to engage in interreligious dialogue and work to continue efforts at peacebuilding.

Faculty Advisor: Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C.

London, England; Madrid, Spain; Rome, Italy

Public spaces in urban environments have historically played a crucial role in developing democratic political cultures, giving people places to interact with each other in political demonstrations, conduct business, or share leisure—places in which they develop civil society. This undergraduate summer break project examined the precautions raised in public spaces following terrorist attacks which make public spaces less welcoming, or at worst hostile. The project documented temporary obstacles found in public spaces in London, Madrid, and Rome, and aimed at developing empirically-based solutions for guaranteeing public safety in urban environments.

Faculty Advisor: Ingrid Rowland

Norway; Sweden; Denmark; Netherlands

This faculty grant supported research for Sophie White’s third book, The Other “One-Percenters”: A Deep Cultural History of Redheads, a cross-disciplinary history of redheads. Centered around Europe and the European diaspora, the book integrates genetic and demographic analyses of the redhead gene within a study underpinned by theories of race, discrimination, and gender to weave a cultural history of redheads in art, literature, popular culture, mythology, and science.

Madrid, Spain

This undergraduate summer break project explores the still contentious end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, particularly the Pacto del Olvido (“Pact of Forgetting”) where the left and right agreed to not relitigate the Civil War and Franco era. The project specifically focuses on whether Spain’s recent suffering under a right-wing dictatorship dissuades the rise of a powerful right-wing populist party, and how Spain’s situation with respect to its past compares with other European countries that suffered similar trauma in the twentieth century.

Faculty Advisor: Andy Gould

Madrid and Barcelona, Spain

Twentieth-century Spain was characterized by the tragedies of civil war and dictatorship, yet as tensions heightened, football became a place where political ideas and attitudes could be expressed. This undergraduate summer break project explored how people’s impressions towards football clubs have affected people’s understanding of the complex issues of the Spanish Civil War and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The project focused on how Spaniards used football to communicate their political differences under the Franco dictatorship, from 1939 to 1975.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant supported funding for a visit from Victoria Smolkin, a scholar of communism, the Cold War, and atheism and religion in the Soviet Union and Russia. Smolkin gave a talk about her book A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, in which Smolkin considers Soviet atheism and its importance for understanding religious life, the Soviet experiment, and Russian politics.

London and Manchester, England

This undergraduate fall break project analyzed key building precedents of Ruskinian Gothic architecture in London and Manchester to inform the design of a cultural center in Garden City, New York, as well as uncover how these buildings use their architectural language to convey moral and social values. The research primarily consisted of on-site documentation and archival research, compiling a comprehensive pattern-book of Ruskinian Gothic architecture and a graphic record of how its architectural language is employed.

Faculty Advisor: Steven Semes

Granada and Seville, Spain

This undergraduate spring break project explored the design and theory of public spaces under various political regimes by studying the stylistic evolution of Mujédar architecture in Granada and Seville. The project focused on the role that Mujédar architecture played in the development and propagation of culture, approaching this research by analyzing archival data and on-site documentation of cityscapes, neighborhoods, and individual buildings.

Faculty Advisor: John Stamper

Ghent and Bruges, Belgium

This undergraduate spring break project explores the urban planning style of New Urbanism by studying two historical cities that have managed to keep up with the process of modernization—Bruges and Ghent. Both of these cities serve as inspiration for New Urbanists; this project sought to find successful examples of functional, traditional habits made with public interaction in mind.

Faculty Advisor: Douglas Duany

South Bend, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for travel from Iceland to the United States.

Slovakia

This faculty grant provided funding for undergraduate students to travel to Slovakia.

London, England

This undergraduate fall break project explored new avenues for discussion on vocations as stories through archival research at the G.K. Chesterton archive in London. The research was done both for personal academic stimulation and for a senior theology thesis entitled “Vocation as Story—A vocational reading of G.K. Chesterton.”

Faculty Advisor: David Fagerberg

Amsterdam, Netherlands

This undergraduate spring break project explored the impact of architecture on a community, focusing on the Westermoskee, a ground-breaking yet bitterly contested mosque in Amsterdam. The project sought to uncover how the mosque has changed the fundamental identity of its neighborhood, how it fits into the context of other buildings in the city, and how architecture and the built environment can facilitate community healing and understanding.

Faculty Advisor: Douglas (Alejandro) Duany

Munich, Germany

This faculty grant supported the Department of German and Russian’s exchange program with Landheim Schondorf, a private day and boarding school outside of Munich. As part of this exchange program, two graduates from Landheim enroll at Notre Dame as full-time, non-degree students, and two graduating seniors from Notre Dame serve as English Teaching Assistants at Landheim.

France

This faculty grant supported the recording and editing of an album of two of Robert Schumann’s works performed by Stephen Lancaster and French fortepianist Laure Collandant. This album was the first recording of these song cycles performed by a female fortepianist and records the collaborative and intimate experience of these songs within an historical environment using an historical instrument.

Belgrade, Serbia

This graduate student project explored how structured social practices are critical to preserving cultural traditions and meaning-making in refugee populations who find themselves in challenging socio-ecologies, thereby contributing to stress mitigation and relatively better health outcomes. The project sought to map structured social practices as emergent social phenomena in Serbia that can be compared across refugee populations, measuring their effect on stress and health.

Faculty Advisor: Rahul Oka

Lisbon, Portugal

This graduate student project explored how agricultural production in Portugal and Angola contributed to notions of race that circulated in the Portuguese empire between 1760-1860. The project studied European historiography and new primary sources on Portuguese society to expand on the transformations of production and social classification left uncovered in previous research. The project sought to contribute to scholarship by considering how the society and government of Portugal understood and interacted with African peoples in the region of Benguela at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

Faculty Advisor: Mariana Candido

Istanbul, Turkey

This graduate student project examined the images employed by Theodore Metochites in the Chora Church in Istanbul, Turkey, reading the thoughtful placement and manipulation of images, color, and space in the church. Investigating this visual theological treatise, the project sought to reveal how Metochites was an astute theologian and innovator in art and architecture rather than a theologically illiterate and arch-conservative as theological historians often remember him. The project analyzed archaeological and archival resources to produce an object analysis and research paper on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Robin Jensen

Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine; Budapest, Hungary; Bremen, Germany; Somerset (NJ), New York, Amherst, and Boston, United States

This graduate student project explored the development of the Ukrainian human rights movement in the Soviet Union, challenging the perception of the dissident movement as anti-governmental and oppositional. The project focused on the ways that the most influential Ukrainian dissidents abandoned the early twentieth-century tradition of confrontational opposition for legal means enshrined in the Soviet constitution. The project emphasized the significance of the regional perspective in the emergence and distribution of human rights ideas across geographic space.

Faculty Advisor: Semion Lyandres

Dublin and Cork, Ireland; Oxford, England

This graduate student project examines the social history of the women of Irish-speaking Ireland from 1300-1600, specifically their perspectives on “honor.” Breaking from traditional medieval Irish historiography, the project sought to explore the idea of honor as a constitutive aspect of all Gaelic society, rather than only in the realm of the elites, and the ways in which women shaped and were shaped by these ideas. The project engaged with numerous manuscript genres, including colophons from medieval texts, legal commentaries, bardic poetry, genealogies, annals, and ecclesiastical records.

Faculty Advisor: Rory Rapple

Venice and Florence, Italy

This graduate student project explored Il Pecorone, a fourteenth-century collection of short stories written by Giovanni d’Agnolo Capponi. The project sought to answer questions about the short stories, including why Capponi chose to include some chapters of Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica rather than others or what the meanings of episodes are in the context of the collection’s storyline. The project’s research would inform a series of articles on Capponi’s collection and a paper comparing the styles of Il Pecorone and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decameron, another collection of novellas.

Faculty Advisor: Zygmunt G. Baranski

London, England

This graduate student project analyzed texts within newspaper publications associated with the Chartist political movement, the largest working-class political movement in nineteenth-century literary studies. The project compiled publications from the British Library’s British Newspaper Archive, seeking to make an original contribution to a subject with growing interest in the scholarly community.

Faculty Advisor: Yasmin Solomonescu

Naples, Italy; Monticello, Virginia

This graduate student project investigated the creation of the “Age of Revolution”—how and when people started thinking they were living in such an age and how the idea of an “age” was constructed in the first place. Taking case studies of the American revolution and the Jacobin Triennium in the Italian States, the project observed how interpretations of revolutionary events changed over the course of the eighteenth century. The project argued that the French Revolution introduced this radically new notion of “revolution”—revolution as a radical break from the past and an occasion to establish a new, truly egalitarian and democratic society—and thereby reframed the narratives of revolution in Europe and the Americas.

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Griffin

Florence, Mantua, and Rome, Italy; Vatican City

This graduate student project investigated the linguistic situation of Leon Battista Alberti, an Italian architect and author, questioning how his linguistic and literary engagement with Latin, Greek, and vernacular language was shaped his public persona as a cultural innovator and the cultural discourses around him. The project explored Alberti’s movement among languages, rhetorical registers, linguistic forms, and shifting between written and visual forms of communication.

Faculty Advisor: Ted Cachey

Copenhagen, Denmark

While in the United States race data is collected in demographic surveys, most European governments collect ethnic data and prohibit race data in adherence to a “color-blind” narrative and a priority to monitor migration trends and assimilation. This graduate student project explores the differences in daily experiences between multiracial “ethnic-Danes” and white ethnic-Danes, the former of which confirm insider and outsider status. The project sought to contribute to literature by studying this phenomenon in a smaller country where populations are not enumerated by race and demonstrating that official government categories are not necessary for racialization processes to occur.

Faculty Advisor: Terence McDonnell

Munich, Freising, and Landshut, Germany

This graduate student project investigated the formation and dissolution of patronage relationships between various members of the Wittelsbach family, the dynastic rulers of Bavaria, and communities of laywomen living a religious life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Informing a later dissertation proposal, the project sought to illuminate the ways that patronage relationships both affected and were affected by changing views of acceptable religious practice as German territories entered into the crisis of the Reformation. The project hoped to answer questions about the role of secular leaders in shaping these religious trends, underscoring the complex and often contradictory nature of the relationship between secular and religious authority in the later medieval period, and compare these issues to modern religious questions.

Faculty Advisor: Daniel Hobbins

London, Gloucester, Bradford, and Wigan, England

This graduate student project explored how nineteenth-century British women writers used representations of physical mobility to resist or critique restrictive gender ideologies by analyzing both contemporary fiction and women’s life writing. The project suggested that the ability to travel, even on a small scale, played a significant role in how women conceptualized their relationship to convention. The project sought to contribute to scholarship by offering fresh insights on a neglected aspect of women’s mobility and placing a new emphasis on women’s ability to navigate and resist social restrictions in their everyday lives.

Faculty Advisor: Sara Maurer

Warsaw, Poland; Bavaria and Saxony, Germany; Carinthia and Burgenland, Austria; Croatia; Czech Republic; Hungary; Slovakia; Slovenia; Switzerland; Boston, Massachusetts

When considering right-wing populism in contemporary Europe, many scholars focus on xenophobia and economic factors while ignoring religious appeals, despite the strange contradiction of rising religious messaging in politics and falling public religiosity. This graduate student project explores the use of religious appeals by right-wing populist parties in Central Europe as a strategic response to electoral competition and as the supply to a demand by an electorate. The project sought to answer what values lead individuals to be attracted by religious appeals and what explains variations in the use and content of religious appeals.

Faculty Advisor: Andy Gould

Olot and Madrid, Spain

This graduate student project investigated different narratives and images of female bodies’ inspections (medical, inquisitorial, juridical, and ethnographical) that shaped the definition of gender in the Hispanic world from the sixteenth century to the present in relation to other European theories and knowledge about anatomy. The project conducted archival and bibliographic research and examined anatomical and artistic sculptures and models to inform a dissertation on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Carlo Jauregui

Image Credit: At the Water Trough by J. Alden Weir, 1876-1877, Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

Florence, Italy; Kiev, Ukraine

This graduate student project examined the works of Dante and his intellectual formation in Florence, questioning how a layperson like Dante could have such sweeping access to literary culture in a setting where most literature circulation was controlled by clerics. The project, part of research for a dissertation, transcribed and edited four quodlibetals from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. The project also included travel to a Italian Medieval Literature research conference sponsored by the Dante Alighieri Italian Society at the Italian Institute of Culture in Kiev, Ukraine, where the first results of this research were presented.

Faculty Advisor: Zygmunt G. Baranski

London, England

This graduate student project investigated the role of the British Empire in fomenting capitalism in the Indian Ocean region, and British commercial and political activities in the Persian Gulf, particularly with Oman. The project sought to uncover how Britain used its commercial, military, and political alliance with Oman to consolidate its power over the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the ports of Zanzibar and Muscat. The research collected in the project informed a dissertation rethinking the emergence of capitalism and modernity in the Indian Ocean.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

London, England

This undergraduate fall break project examined urban bordering in London and its relationship to the past, present, and future of Brexit. The project focused on whether visible/invisible bordering practices between ethnic communities exist in London, and if the Brexit referendum changed the way migrants experience bordering in their everyday lives. The project employed informal observations of urban border spaces and in-person interviews with migrants.

Clifden, Ireland

This undergraduate fall break project explores the Irish food system, aiming to understand how it promotes access to healthy, nourishing foods at low costs and how other large economies like the United States could learn from it. The project studied this food system on the ground, researching the Connemara region which is known for its family farmers and small producers.

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Whelan

Barcelona, Spain

This project explored how new and old building techniques are integrated by analyzing the architecture and construction process of the Sagrada Família. Through documenting the interior and exterior of the building and analyzing archival information, the project sought to illuminate new understandings of Antoni Gaudí’s innovations and integration of traditional and contemporary methods and consider how these factors could improve modern architectural design.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

Oslo, Norway

This undergraduate summer break project explored whether a combination of government funding and private investments have worked to drive innovation, using Norway as a case study. The project focuses on startup growth statistics, but also on how the country has worked to foster a culture of innovation.

Faculty Advisor: Russell Faeges

London, UK; Limerick, Ireland

This undergraduate summer break project examined the benefits, disadvantages, and overall effectiveness of public healthcare systems in the United Kingdom and Ireland, two model countries for universal healthcare. The project centered around interviews with doctors, professors, employees of the NHS/HSE, and other professionals who work with these organizations.

Faculty Advisor: Jennifer Robichaud

Seville and Cordoba, Spain

This undergraduate winter break project studied the lasting Moorish influence in southern Spain, particularly through the ornamentation belonging to the architectural style of Mujédar. The project sought to better understand the unique nature of the Andalucía region and contribute to the ongoing conversation regarding migrants and acceptance between different cultures and religions.

Faculty Advisor: Olivier Morel

London, UK; Dublin, Ireland

The long-term economic implications of the Brexit referendum are still heavily debated, as though the referendum passed in 2016, the United Kingdom only officially exited the European Union in 2020. This undergraduate summer break project focused on one aspect of Brexit’s economic impact, exploring the future of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the UK and Ireland following Brexit. The project employed interviews with experts from esteemed institutions and corporations.

Faculty Advisor: John Michel

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project analyzed the ruins of ancient Greek architecture, the inspiration for the great feats of Roman Classical architecture and many periods since. The project employed methods from the tradition of many great architects from the last two centuries, including on-site sketches, measured drawings, field notes, and watercolor.

Faculty Advisor: Ingrid Rowland

Rome, Italy

This undergraduate fall break project analyzed the precedents from Classical and Renaissance architecture studied by Italian Baroque architect Francesco Borromini to understand how he innovated from them. The project employed a series of measured drawings, sketches, and photographs of Classical and Renaissance architecture and placed them in historical conversation with Borromini.

Faculty Advisor: Judith DiMaio

Copenhagen and Aalborg, Denmark; Milan and Torino, Italy

This undergraduate spring break project observed the intergenerational relationships existing in two European countries, Denmark and Italy, to better understand their elderly care systems. The countries were chosen for their exceptional reputation in elderly care, in the case of Denmark, and their Catholic influence, in the case of Italy, to explore how a Catholic identity and perspective might provide impetus behind compassionate care.

Faculty Advisors: Lenny DeLorenzo, Todd Whitmore

Paris, France; Berlin, Germany

This undergraduate winter break project explored the formation of national identity, specifically in the rather stable modern economic and political landscapes of France and Germany. The project investigated if and how a national identity must change when the equilibrium of cultural stability is tipped, focusing primarily on the recent growth of immigration in both countries.

Faculty Advisor: Sonja Stojanovic

Astana, Kazakhstan

This undergraduate winter break project explored the educational systems in ex-Soviet countries, investigating remnants of Soviet-era biases toward “hard” sciences. The project conducted interviews with educators and reviews of lesson plans to determine whether these biases exist in modern post-Soviet academia and industry.

Faculty Advisor: David Gasperetti

Dublin, Ireland

Despite the traditional political science narrative which ties populism to the vices inherent in globalization and recessions, there is extreme support for the European Union among nearly all the Irish population. This undergraduate fall break project investigated Rodrik’s economic security thesis and the cultural backlash argument’s shortcomings in explaining Ireland’s relationship with the EU in response to critical junctures in recent geopolitics, namely the 2008 Financial Crisis and Brexit. The project aimed to discover what aspects of Ireland’s political system and history makes it an anomaly in this regard.

Faculty Advisor: Andy Gould

Munich, Germany

This undergraduate fall break project conducted a comparative study between the urban plans of Munich’s Königsplatz and the Imperial fora of Rome, specifically the Forum of Trajan, to reveal the Königsplatz’ connections to the forum typology and understand how that typology was adapted. The project aimed to understand Paul Ludwig Troost’s motivations for planning the site as he did and gain a deeper knowledge of the reasoning behind the first Nazi platz and those that followed.

Faculty Advisor: Krupali Krusche

The Hague, Netherlands

This undergraduate fall break project explored the development and structure of international human rights systems, focusing on how amnesty laws preclude the threat of prosecution in non-domestic courts. The project considers the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg trials and compares its development to the International Criminal Court’s mandate, which includes crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Córdoba, Sevilla, and Granada, Spain

This undergraduate winter break project investigated solutions to sustainable gardening practices using traditional Moorish architecture from three Spanish cities as case studies. The project sought to address how architecture in these cities is similar, how the interior spaces interact with the garden, and how techniques aimed at environmental and architectural sustainability might be employed in modern Europe.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

London and Cambridge, England

This undergraduate summer break project explored the uneasy neutrality of fascist Spain during World War II and the British struggles to maintain Spanish neutrality. The project studied the intersection of the reality on the ground of Franco’s Spain, contemporary British perception, and actions taken by the British government, through the use of Hoare and the SOE to prevent Spain’s entry into the Axis powers. The project aimed to serve as an example of the gap between expectations and reality in international relations, particularly during wartime.

Faculty Advisor: Rev. Robert Sullivan

Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate spring break project investigated the interactions between science and poetry—exploring how the communication of medical concepts to the general population can be improved by thinking innovatively and organically, as is done in poetry. This project centered around historic interactions between science and poetry, particularly in Celtic Ireland

Faculty Advisor: Christopher Stevens

Berlin, Germany

An aging society, consistently low birth rates, and a rising influx of refugees has left the German population to consider what it means to be German, a question they have struggled to answer since the end of World War II and the rejection of Nazism. This undergraduate winter break project explored how architectural design can foster community, artistic creativity, and a sense of individual and national identity in modern Berlin. The project also employed traditional and modern German construction techniques to propose a mass-timber tower, aiming to bring Germany to the forefront of the global sustainability movement.

Faculty Advisor: Kim Rollings

Copenhagen, Denmark

Freetown Christiania is an anarchic commune created in 1971 that has withstood conflicts with the Danish government, eras of dangerous activity, and now an influx of tourism. This undergraduate spring break project explored the relation between urban planning and social interaction by studying Christiania. The project also sought to fill a scholarly gap in information on Christiania and other similar anarchic communes and legitimize these places as areas of architectural and urban planning study.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a visit from Gaël Faye, a celebrated contemporary author and award-winning rap and hip-hop artist. Faye met with students for informal discussions and held a public event where he read excerpts from his first novel and spoke on his experiences as an author, songwriter, and artist with Notre Dame professor Alison Rice. Faye’s novel, Small Country (2016), is a bestseller in France that has been awarded many literary prizes, and he had recently won a Victoire de la Musique, the French equivalent of a Grammy, for his music.

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project followed the footsteps of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, two famous eighteenth century British architects, in understanding Greek architecture. This project compared the approaches, notes, and sketches of Stuart and Revett with those of the researcher, taken in twenty-first century Athens.

Faculty Advisor: Alessandro Pierattini

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate winter break project explores the question of how to best discuss and process death and dying in a clinical setting, studying how different cultural traditions deal with this process. The project focuses on Ancient Greek culture in conversation with previous research on Irish culture.

Faculty Advisor: Christopher Stevens

Olympia, Greece

This undergraduate spring break project followed in the footsteps of the authors of Ionian Antiquities, a landmark architectural book studying Classical Greek art and architecture, to produce a collection of the researcher’s own sketches and documentation. The project placed these sketches in conversation with ideas from Italian engraver Giovanni Piranesi, considering the power of nature over human structures and highlighting this struggle in Greek architecture.

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Lombardi-LoGiudice

Milan and Rome, Italy

This undergraduate winter break project examined the state of religiosity in modern Italian society by observing Italian infrastructure. The project investigated the state of systems surrounding churches throughout Italy, which are under government jurisdiction, to determine whether they were in good condition. The project focused both on churches in small towns and large cities, to circumvent the issue of tourism, which might bias results on larger churches which receive many international visitors.

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Vivirito

Galapagos, Ecuador

This faculty grant supported the NDI Insider project “In the Footsteps of Charles Darwin” in the Galapagos.

London, England; Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate summer break project explores the emigration of French Huguenots to Ireland, focusing on the complex relationship between a people fleeing religious persecution from Catholics to an island where Catholics were the persecuted. The project conducted archival research in London and Dublin, including Huguenot sermons and military records, to study the lives of French Huguenots and their participation in the Jacobite War in Ireland.

Faculty Advisor: Rory Rapple

Newbridge, Kildare, and Dublin, Ireland

The Clubhouse model is a wellness-based recovery model for those with mental illness characterized by nontraditional methods and community-building. Despite having an international research archive, there is currently no research on the effectiveness of the model in Ireland, which has a unique medical context. This undergraduate spring break project examines the model’s effectiveness in Ireland through full immersion in a Clubhouse community.

Faculty Advisor: Lisa Anderson

Paris, France

Julien Gracq was a French twentieth-century author whose writing is characterized by its intelligent and artistic abstraction balanced with the elegance and fluidity of style often ascribed to surrealist authors. This undergraduate spring break project explored how Gracq developed his surrealist-inspired style after leaving Paris, the center of surrealism, and returning to Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, a historically traditional Catholic region.

Faculty Advisor: Odette Menyard

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for a presentation entitled “Language and Power: The Making of the Catalan Linguistic Identity.” The presentation, based on a monograph by Lledó-Guillem, focused on the political, ideological, and cultural events that made the appearance of the Catalan linguistic identity possible in the thirteenth century using an interdisciplinary approach.

London and Oxford, England

This undergraduate fall break project investigated the ethical, social, and political issues surrounding public displays of human remains in museums, focusing on museums in London. The project considered how London preserves and celebrates its history, including the issues of the past, and explored London as a setting for a film screenplay in which the research would be used.

Faculty Advisor: Christine Becker

Athens, Greece

This undergraduate winter break project investigated social implications of the construction of the first mosque in Athens, Greece since the Ottoman Empire’s occupation of the city in 1833. The project focused on whether Muslim migrants are encouraged by the construction of a public mosque in Athens as a sign of acceptance and support of their religion, and how conservative Greeks are responding to the construction.

Faculty Advisor: Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C.

Notre Dame, Indiana

This faculty grant provided funding for students to attend a showing of Molière’s “Imaginary Invalid,” featuring a new translation by Dan Smith (Notre Dame ’98), staged by the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre. The students viewed the showing as part of a survey course on medieval through early modern theater, including two other Molière plays.

Lisbon and Coimbra, Portugal

When discussing the refugee crisis, Portugal is often overlooked; while many immigrants do not even consider the country as a destination, it has agreed to take double the number of immigrants allocated to them by the EU. This undergraduate spring break project investigated what the attitudes toward immigrants, particularly Syrian/Middle Eastern refugees, are like in Portugal and what the country has done proactively to either attract or deter immigration. The project interviewed government officials, NGOs, migrants, and Portuguese citizens.

Faculty Advisor: Marcio Bahia

Barcelona, Spain

This undergraduate summer break project studied spatial arrangement, material application, and tinctorial architecture—three main aspects of modern architecture. The project focused on sites that represented the most important architectural and design approaches of Spanish modernism.

Faculty Advisor: Selena Anders

Mainz, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Paimpont, France

This undergraduate spring break project investigated the history of printing and bookmaking and gathered visual reference material from early printers. The project explored the different approaches that these printers took to binding, the combination of word and image, and the relationship between a book’s content and form from examples located in the Mainzer Minipressen-Archiv and the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

Faculty Advisor: Amy Mulligan

Paris, France

This faculty grant supported the completion and outreach campaign of a web documentary entitled “Profil 14-18,” created by Olivier Morel in collaboration with TV5-Monde. The web documentary explored the stories of seventeen people of various nationalities engaged in the First World War.

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London, England

This undergraduate spring break project studied London’s social housing blocks, some of Europe’s most successful and innovative housing of its kind, to create a comprehensive pattern book of design techniques and elements employed in the rebuilding of London. The project focused on a typological analysis of British social housing from 1960 to 1980 and sought to identify the elements in planning and design that made these neighborhoods successful.

Faculty Advisor: Selena Anders

London, Cambridge, and Oxford, England

This undergraduate fall break project exploited the way that religion might be used as a conduit for peacebuilding, particularly through the process of scriptural reasoning. The project engaged with experts in the field, including in the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and studied past and current intrastate conflicts from a female religious perspective.

Faculty Advisor: George Lopez

Rome, Italy; London and Cambridgeshire, England

This theological project explored the concept of eros by placing modern perspectives on romance in conversation with theological tradition. The undergraduate summer break project employed Luca Guadagnino’s film "Call Me by Your Name" as a case study, analyzing the film through the lens of three theological works on the concept of eros.

Faculty Advisor: John Cavadini

Dublin, Ireland

Until 2007, rugby was considered a base foreign sport and was banned from the Gaelic Athletic Association due to its English origins. This undergraduate fall break project investigated rugby’s relationship with the GAA as well as the sport’s recent influence on Irish identity, studying negotiations between the GAA and the Irish Rugby Football Union and the public reaction to the first rugby match. The project also considered the political and historical underpinnings that strained the negotiations and made the event so controversial.

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Griffin

Paris, France

In the wake of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, President Francois Hollande declared an état d'urgence, an exceptional state of emergency originating from the Algerican crisis. This action expanded the powers of the government and security forces while overriding the power of the judiciary. This undergraduate spring break project explored the fundamental paradox of the French “state of exception” as a legal concept, studying how it detracts from constitutional legitimacy and what role national propaganda played in its creation.

Faculty Advisor: Olivier Morel

Bordeaux, Paris, and Reims, France

This undergraduate summer break project examined the effects and causes of Chinese intervention in the French wine industry, primarily in the region of Bordeaux, focusing on both the cultural impacts and economic implications for individuals and the nation. The project conducted interviews with former vineyard owners and studied literature on the subject to explore the culture and tradition of winemaking and the decisions that led to the current climate.

Faculty Advisor: Shauna Williams

Lincoln, England

This undergraduate spring break project analyzed the Lincoln Cathedral, an influential example of Gothic architecture, through a series of sketches, watercolor renderings, and diagrams. The project aimed to understand the structure within its urban context, as well as detail its design and functions. The project emphasized the collaboration between irregular elements of design, placing the Gothic form in contrast to Classical works.

Faculty Advisor: John Stamper

Dublin and Galway, Ireland

This undergraduate fall break project investigated how Ireland, a country which fiercely guarded its Catholic faith under British oppression for centuries, secularized so rapidly in the past forty years. The project explored Ireland’s experiences with The Troubles and their accession to the EU and these events’ contributions to the decline of Catholicism in Ireland. The project relied on interviews with scholars, clergy, and laity, as well as archival research to follow the process of decline.

Faculty Advisor: Paul Ocobock

London, England

This undergraduate winter break project explored the effects of the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs on the United Kingdom and the policy responses of the UK in retaliation. The project analyzed the tariffs’ overall and local impacts on the UK economy, as well as the effects of the UK’s legislative response on their economy and the US-UK trade balance.

Faculty Advisor: Mitchell Olsen

Reykjavik, Iceland

This undergraduate summer break project studied the deterrent effect of strict government financial regulation on risk-taking in retirement investment by administering an experimental survey to Icelandic citizens. The survey sought to answer whether, and to what extent, stronger financial laws and judicial action change public financial risk preferences.

Faculty Advisor: Jason Reed, IV

Madrid, Spain

This undergraduate spring break project researches the geometries of Spanish textiles, focusing on the immersion and influence of multiple cultures on Spanish tapestries and other works. The project investigated the points in history that introduced new materials, designs, and methods to Spain to promote the same sense of detail, refinement, and storytelling in later work.

Faculty Advisor: Justin Barfield

Ikaria, Greece

This undergraduate fall break project determined factors that differentiate the traditional Mediterranean diet from common American diets, aiming to understand how these healthier habits can be transferred to the American people. The research relied on experience and participation with the Mediterranean food culture and interviews with expert researchers on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Merlin Bruening

Brussels, Belgium

This undergraduate spring break project studied what systems are in place through NGOs to alleviate the issue of increased immigration that has faced Brussels’s government since 2015. The project focused on interactions with social workers and volunteers on the frontlines of the problem in Maximilien Park.

Faculty Advisor: Emilia Powell

London, England; Strasbourg, France

This undergraduate summer break project examined the experiences of the Roma in two different countries, England and France, to study the complex interactions between individual Roma populations and the communities in which they live. The project aimed to understand the Romani within the context of their specific, diverse communities, and recognizes the non-homogenous economic, social, and cultural circumstances of each culture group.

Faculty Advisor: Emma Rosenberg

Madrid, Spain

This undergraduate spring break project studied the rise of the Spanish Alta Velocidad Española (AVE) system, the longest-high speed rail network in Europe, by exploring the factors contributing to the system's development. The project explored the political and cultural factors that allowed for this transportation revolution and the technical components of its development by interacting with company sites in Spain and the rail system.

Faculty Advisor: Alexandros Taflanidis

London, England; Helsinki, Finland

This undergraduate spring break project examined strategies for addressing homelessness in three countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, and Finland—and their outcomes. The project analyzed quantitative factors, like success rates and program costs, as well as qualitative factors, like personal narratives and satisfaction with each system.

Faculty Advisor: Fr. Khaled Anatolios

Vienna and Salzburg, Austria

This undergraduate winter break project was a comparative study of the parallels between Mozart and Vivaldi’s final years and burials as indicative of their posthumous reception. The project aimed at revealing the impact of Vienna’s musical, social, and religious scene on the works of Vivaldi and Mozart, and more broadly, show the ways in which an audience’s evolving perception of a composer’s final years and death can determine a similar evolution of the reception of a composer’s music.

Faculty Advisor: Susan Youens

Inishbofin, Letterfrack, and Fountainhill, Ireland

This undergraduate fall break project analyzed how natural resources have been integrated into the culture of rural life and if that culture is sustainable in contemporary livelihoods. The project served as research for a scholarly paper and documentary exploring the use of traditional knowledge regarding the use of natural resources in Co. Galway, Ireland and analyzing how cultural practices have resulted from the local environment.

Faculty Advisor: Ian Kuijt

Ljubljana, Slovenia

L’Arche is a community-based organization that serves and respects the human dignity of adults with intellectual and physical disabilities, providing independence, community, and purpose for these marginalized individuals. This undergraduate winter break project continued research on L’Arche in regions of conflict, examining how the L’Arche model is operating in Slovenia, a country which has experienced numerous regime changes and economic crises in the past century. The project compares this analysis of L’Arche Slovenia to a prior analysis of the organization in Palestine.

Faculty Advisor: George Lopez

Dublin, Ireland; Belfast, Northern Ireland

Scholarship on women’s roles during The Troubles has often simplified them to that of supporters or peacemakers. This undergraduate summer project moved past the traditional view of women working as peacemakers and enriches our understanding of how women and gender influenced paramilitary groups and violence during and after The Troubles. The project focused on women’s participation in the Ulster Volunteer Force and the government-organized Ulster Defence Regiment rather than their roles in the IRA.

Faculty Advisor: Gail Bederman

Turin, Italy; Munich, Germany; London, England

This undergraduate summer break project investigated the processes that led to the incredible marketization of football club sponsorship deals, focusing on stadium naming rights and jersey sponsorships. The project interviewed locals to gauge the attitudes of average consumers as well as executives to gain information about the impact of sponsorships on consumer preferences.

Faculty Advisor: Chris Stevens

Prague, Czech Republic

This undergraduate winter break project engaged with the life and works of Václav Havel in the city that inspired him, Prague, to better understand his philosophy and its place in the public sphere. The project explored how Havel’s ideas about political life have been fulfilled, or left unfulfilled, in Prague, and included an immersion in the Catholic community of the city.

Faculty Advisor: Rachel Tomas Morgan

Vienna, Austria

This undergraduate summer break project studied the European architectural scene’s shift away from Neoclassical Historicism in the late nineteenth century as a bridge to modern architecture. The project sought to understand the reasons for rejecting Neoclassicism and the fusion of contemporary social ideology into design through exposure to artists and architects’ styles and iconography.

London, England

This undergraduate winter break project explored the principles of New Urbanism as they relate to historical architectural precedent, using the London Boroughs as case studies. The project studied the principles of form, spatial sequencing, hierarchy, and circulation of the areas visited to understand how cities and towns had been built for the last several centuries. The project's research contributed to a study on Neighborhood Center, a community-based and human-scale development proposal in Denver, Colorado.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

Galway, Ireland

In the early 1900s, Ireland’s political climate was characterized by tension and turmoil as the country entered a revolutionary period against British rule. Tensions peaked in April 1916 when Irish republicans took advantage of Britain’s preoccupation with the first World War and staged a rebellion on Easter Monday, an event memorialized in Irish memory. This undergraduate spring break project sought to reveal whether World War I is remembered as a distinct moment in Ireland’s history or simply as a catalyst for Irish independence.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Athens, Greece

This graduate student project studied nineteenth-century neoclassical houses in Athens to consider how Athens could be built upon or changed today. The project researched documentation of neoclassical residences and architectural analysis to understand how the neoclassical style is part of the identity of modern Athens and is important to the history of the modern Greek state.

Faculty Advisor: Richard Economakis

Versailles, Sèvres, Paris, and Chartres, France; Basel, Switzerland

This graduate student project studied the concept of historical amnesia and art created as objects of cultural memory, specifically the cultural memory of porcelain objects in the context of historical European monuments and contemporary European installation art. The project focused on recontextualizing eighteenth century porcelain objects that were made right before the French Revolution, juxtaposing them with contemporary forms of semiotics (specifically food and technology) to talk about issues of class and inequality, historically and today. The project investigated historical and contemporary porcelain artworks housed in different exhibits to gain inspiration from these site-specific works as examples of how to create affective environments for housing sculptures.

Faculty Advisor: Bill Kremer

London, England

This graduate student project explores a liturgical rite in the Church of the East—the preparation of the Eucharistic bread and wine in the East Syriac tradition. The project investigated the unique intercultural and interdenominational interactions between the Church of England and the Church of the East, as the first printed edition of this liturgical service was produced by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Mission in 1890. The project sought to better understand how English missionaries used these manuscripts to produce their printed text of the preparatory Eucharistic rites for the benefit of Assyrian Christians and what effect these European missionaries had on Middle Eastern Christians, and vice versa.

Faculty Advisor: Maxwell Johnson

Vatican City

This graduate student project researched fifteenth-century letters from nine medieval Burgundian dioceses’ parishioners to the Apostolic Penitentiary requesting a confessor other than their parish priest. These pleas, called supplications, provide insight into the attributes medieval commoners sought in a personal confessor and how they identified these characteristics, but also preview the dissatisfaction and tensions that would lead to the Reformation. The project’s research informed a chapter in a later dissertation as well as a scholarly article.

Faculty Advisor: John Van Engen

Vienna, Austria; St. Andrews, Scotland

This graduate student project examined the modern theological articulation of the concept of Purgatory in Catholicism, or more accurately, the lack of modern theological articulation. The project involved an interview with Gisbert Greshake, an important theologian who carried a two-decade long dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger on the nature of Purgatory, and attendance at the University of St. Andrews titled Sin, Sacrifice, and Salvation in Jewish and Christian Antiquity. The research from this project informed a dissertation which sought to begin the systematic rearticulation of Purgatory theology by relating the concept in a contemporary idiom.

Faculty Advisor: Francesca Murphy

Dublin, Ireland

This graduate student project conducted exploratory dissertation research on the roles of debates over church lands in shaping Irish identity and politics in the 1640s. The project analyzed the Carte Papers, a major extant collection of manuscripts from seventeenth-century Ireland containing the correspondences of the Duke of Ormond. More specifically, the project focused on volumes 14-22, which contain Ormond’s negotiations with the Confederate Catholic organizations over control of church lands and other religious concessions, investigating the ways in which Confederate Catholic leaders constructed their arguments for the returns of church lands.

Faculty Advisor: Rory Rapple

Rome, Italy

This graduate student project explored how the “American experiment in ordered liberty” spoke to the post-world war agenda of not only European conservatives in general, but especially to that of Pope Pius XII. Building on previous research on American Catholic patriotic discourse in World War II, this project argued that despite most historians portraying the American Church as a progressive force within global Catholicism, the evidence uncovered suggests that throughout the 1940s, the US Church was profoundly “Roman” at heart.

Faculty Advisor: John T. McGreevy

Hessen and Berlin, Germany; Vienna, Austria

This graduate student project explored how community-building takes place among minority migrant populations—spatially and temporally—in relation to the already existing communities in the urban places where migrants settle. The project focused on identity formation from a relational and performative perspective through the lens of place-making, language use and retention, and religious practices among the Zazaki diaspora in Europe and western Turkey. The project sought to answer what the dynamics of identity formation, maintenance, and performance are, and how these Zazaki speakers negotiate and produce/reproduce their identities as shaped by their environment.

Faculty Advisor: Maurizio Albahari

Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, and Bonn, Germany

The Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965) was designed to force all West German citizens to face their own complicity with the Nazi criminal system, but in reality failed to present the Holocaust as anything but a summation of individual crimes committed for individual reasons. This graduate student project examined the place of the Frankfurt-Auschwitz Trial in post-war Germany’s evolving relationship with domestic law. The project’s archival research informed a dissertation on the same subject.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Wittenberg, Wolfenbüttel, and Rostock, Germany

This project examined intellectual culture as it developed within Lutheran universities from roughly 1570 to 1620. The project focused on the works associated with the many learned controversies within Lutheranism at the time, such as the disagreements over the Formula of Concord in the 1580s and the Hofmannstreit of the late 1590s. The project conducted archival research on three different important universities of the era and prepared materials for a dissertation on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Brad Gregory

Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland

This graduate student project explored the intellectual creativity of Scottish faithful in forming their own strategies for identity and placement during the age of empire and the Enlightenment. Emphasizing the role of religious philosophy within this process of understanding, this project argued that the ways in which men and women interacted with the empire registered the intellectual, religious, and social tumult incurred from the 1707 Act of Union and Enlightenment ideas. The project evaluated how the existence of cross-national networks affected local and personal interpretations at a time when intellectual and religious instability prevailed as a result of peoples, ideas, and nations clashing because of this new British entity.

Faculty Advisor: Mark Noll

Washington, District of Columbia

This graduate student project investigated high profile instances of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, questioning why the US chose to litigate some of these incidents while leaving others to be resolved politically. The project generated a journal article on the causal logic behind the litigation attempts, and afterward the research served as the basis for a book project on the diplomatic history of these events. The project sought to advance scholarship on the politics of the early Cold War in Eastern Europe, demonstrating how the string of attempts at international litigation initiated by the US in the 1950s reveals a presidential administration attempting to use law as a bargaining tactic in the European theater.

Faculty Advisor: Emilia Justyna Powell

Vatican City

This graduate student project examined the life and career of Ella B. Edes (1832-1916), an American lay woman who worked in Rome as a journalist for many Catholic publications and acted as a translator, money manager, and reporter for the Propaganda Fide, the Holy See’s congregation for overseas “mission territories.” In contrast to earlier historians who viewed Edes primarily as an “agent” of bishops trying to advance their causes at the Vatican, this project investigated the broad scope of Edes’s life and work in Rome and the meaning of her “peculiar position” as a person of influence whose official recognition and advancement at the Vatican was severely limited by her gender.

Faculty Advisor: Kathleen Cummings

Würzburg and Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

This graduate student project studied the effects of broader political movements at German universities, specifically how these universities interacted with the administration in the decades following the Napoleonic wars. The project focused on the ways in which students at southern German universities grappled with questions of German identity and responded to state-building efforts and major events, including the reconstruction of Germany following the Napoleonic wars. The project sought to contribute to existing scholarship on political movements’ effects on German universities, which primarily focus on the 1930s-1940s.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Notre Dame, Indiana; Turin and Rome, Italy

This graduate student project examines the life and works of Primo Levi, an Italian Holocaust survivor and a prominent international post-war intellectual figure, specifically how intertextuality influenced Levi’s writing. The project asked why so many international authors are present in Levi’s work and what role this intertextuality plays, focusing on constant Shakespearean references throughout Levi’s works and thought. The preliminary research of this project investigated Primo Levi’s education and encounters with this international literary culture.

Faculty Advisor: Christian Moevs

Ashmansworth, Oxford, and London, England; St. Andrews, Scotland

This graduate student project examined the contributions of Gerald Finzi (1901-1956), an historically neglected “minor” figure in the development of a distinctly “English sound” during the English Musical Renaissance (c. 1840-1940). The project analyzed Finzi’s compositional techniques of unpublished/unfinished works and critical reception to sketch a different picture of the twentieth-century musical landscape. The project sought to advance the musicological scholarship on Finzi’s works and add an original contribution to the history of English nationalistic music.

Faculty Advisor: Christopher Chowrimootoo

Seville, Spain; Rome, Italy

This graduate student project examined the ways that the serial, incomplete emancipations toward the independence of the Dominican Republic transformed race and the institution of slavery in the colony. The project followed the activity of the colonizing powers (Spain, France, and Saint Domingue/Haiti), slave holders, and freedom-seekers in slave markets, criminal courts, notarial offices, plantations, and churches in a colonial struggle for freedom. The project also collected material for a secondary research topic concerned with how mahogany shaped racial ideas, freedom, landholding, and state-building in the Spanish Empire from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

Faculty Advisor: Karen Graubart

Trondheim, Norway

This graduate student project investigated and compared the institutional environments and pressures of higher education in the United States and Norway that give rise to “study drug” use among university students, including tuition costs, the perceived need for a college degree, cultural assumptions about going to university, and access to health care. The project examined the structure and value of higher education in Norway compared to the United States and how this affects the discussion of study drugs in each location. The research informed a future dissertation and established connections for future research.

Faculty Advisor: Susan Blum

Belgrade, Serbia

This graduate student project examined the complexity of migration by comparing experiences of transitory refugees encamped in Serbia and Kenya, investigating patterns of integration and exclusion of encamped and transitory refugees within their host communities. Engaging with biological and human cultural concepts, the project sought to understand how refugees, who survived wars, cope with the immense changes brought by forced displacement while struggling to restructure their identity and place at both individual and collective levels. The project aimed to contribute to scholarship on forced/transitory migration and general refugee phenomena, specifically the process of integration, community building, and policies that respond to these crises.

Faculty Advisor: Rahul Oka

London, England

This graduate student project explored female education reform in India and the people who held the most power to enact it—British women and elite Indian men, the latter of which adopted a veneer of whiteness to become “native gentlemen.” The project investigated how this specific performance of race and gender allowed white women and Indian men to form professional partnerships even during the final century of the British Empire, a period where both groups were strictly segregated.

Faculty Advisor: Fr. Robert Sullivan

Bologna and Florence, Italy

This graduate student project investigated the intellectual formation of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in 1290s Florence, focusing on how Dante had access to such an expanse of literary culture. The project explored the avenues through which a lay person like Dante could have access to the materials he commanded, at a time when the circulation of theological, philosophical, and literary works was primarily controlled by clerics. The project sought to compile a complete and paleographically accurate transcription of the main material that would be edited, analyzed, and discussed in a future dissertation on the subject.

Faculty Advisor: Zygmunt G. Baranski

Athens, Greece

This graduate student project examined Greek political theory involving the tensions of intergovernmentalism and supranationalism and the discontinuities that create new identities. The project illustrated these tensions through the contemporary debate between two major modern Greek philosophers, Christos Yannaras and Stelios Ramfos, and various ancient Greek philosophers. The project sought to inform a dissertation on the subject, improve Greek language skills (in both Modern and Ancient Greek), and prepare materials for interviews with Yannaras and Ramfos.

Rome, Italy; Barcelona, Spain

Temporary by nature, the Olympic Games’ tradition of changing locations poses a problem for architects—how can they impress athletes and visitors with revolutionary structures while preserving local urban characteristics and long-term sustainability? This undergraduate winter break project examines successful examples of Summer Olympics developments as models of sustainability by analyzing the inherent benefits of integrated sustainable design at architectural and urban scales.

Faculty Advisors: Selena Anders, Krupali Krusche

Zurich, Switzerland

This undergraduate fall break project investigated why the Swiss financial industry was delayed in utilizing public cloud services and solutions that many other competitors utilized. The project sought to propose a viable solution for how Swiss banks, particularly Credit Suisse, could work with Swiss fintech startups to implement public cloud strategies in a more efficient, secure, and scalable manner.

Faculty Advisor: Peter Bui

Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate fall break project addressed the influence of the Irish language on Irish nationalism amongst women during the 1916 Easter Rising. Specifically, how something as simple as an Irish language class offered to women in Universities awakened and attracted them to the militant cause of Irish Nationalism. The project sought to make connections to contemporary Irish pride and the role of the Irish language in the present-day Irish identity.

Faculty Advisor: Paul Ocobrock

London, England; Glasgow, Scotland; Dublin, Ireland

This undergraduate winter break project compared the role of Catholic primary and secondary schools in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The project explored issues facing Catholic schools in the U.K. and Ireland and how they promote their values in an increasingly secular population.

Faculty Advisor: Fr. Timothy Scully

London, England

Focusing on the T4 euthanasia program that systematically killed an estimated 70,000 people with disabilities and mental ilnesses in Nazi Germany, this undergraduate fall break project explored the complex relationship between the ideologies of Nazi perpetrators and America’s own eugenic beliefs. The project utilized documents in London’s Wiener Library which holds the complete records of the UN War Crimes Commission.

Faculty Advisor: John Deak

Helsinki, Finland

European countries handled the refugee crisis of the later half of the 2010’s differently. In Finland the government provided refugees within their borders with digital identities via blockchain networks. This undergraduate winter break project studied the technical aspects of the self-sovereign identity platform and whether or not it could be implemented at a transnational level by the UN.

Faculty Advisor: Eileen Hunt Botting

Berlin, Germany

More than one-fifth of Germany’s inhabitants are foreign-born or children of immigrants, yet Germany’s educational system often fails to integrate children with these backgrounds. Campus Rütli was founded in 2008 by the government of Berlin to address these growing civil disturbances and disadvantages in the highly diverse district of Neukölln. This undergraduate winter break study sought to better understand Campus Rütli’s policies of immigrant assimilation through education, revealing what is effective in dealing with the social, economic, and local repercussions of hyper-diverse migrant communities.

Faculty Advisor: Steffen Kaupp

Copenhagen, Denmark

This undergraduate fall break project examined Danish intentional co-housing communities’ functioning, the structures (both physical and abstract) that contribute to the longevity, popularity, and scalability within greater Danish Society. The project explored how the built environment contributed to the well-functioning and collaborative successes of intentional co-housing communities in Denmark.

Faculty Advisor: David Ruccio

Norwich, England

This undergraduate fall break project explored the setting, Julian of Norwich's anchoress cell, where she lived and wrote her text, Revelations of Divine Love. The project sought to understand the magnitude of Julian of Norwhich's influence on society and how she is memorialized in present-day Norwich.

Faculty Advisor: Denis Robichaud

Paris, Rouen, and Honfleur, France

Since the 10th century when the legendary Market Les Halles was founded, the tradition of the public market has been an essential part of French Culture. This undergraduate winter break project consisted of a study of French market halls to better understand their role in French society and the design factors that encourage community, with the goal of contributing the findings to urban revitalization in America.

Faculty Advisor: Lucien Steil

Copenhagen, Denmark; Malmo, Sweden

Swedish and Danish ecovillages promote deeper connections with nature, nearby communities and other citizens. This undergraduate fall break project studied best practices for community-based and nature-centric villages with a focus on those who care for the dwellings and community spaces and how they were integrated into the broader urban landscape.

Faculty Advisor: Kimberly Rollings

Brussels, Belgium

This undergraduate fall break project recorded and observed Trappist monastery breweries in Belgium. Specifically, the challenges of combining the religious privacy of a monastic cloister with the production and public involvement necessitated by a brewery and a taproom.

Faculty Advisor: Alan DeFrees

Glasgow, Scotland; Edinburgh, Scotland

This undergraduate winter break project examined the lifecycle of university and other educational buildings, with a focus on English and Scottish institutions from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The project studied how these buildings were designed, how they had been augmented over time, and how their programs had changed after their initial construction, seeking to reveal observable design patterns through which historic facilities adapted to modern needs.

Faculty Advisor: Steven Semes

Amsterdam, Netherlands

This undergraduate fall break project explored the processes underlying Social Impact Bonds, a new way to finance the expansion of social services in some European countries. The goal was to bridge the gap between private interests and social welfare by publicizing the unconventional role that investors play in addressing societal reforms in education, criminal justice, and healthcare—a role that is typically delegated to the government.

Faculty Advisor: Kevin Christiano

Madrid, Spain

This undergraduate fall break project explored the curtailing of government-funded, gender equality Institutions in Spain following the 2008 economic crisis. The project examined whether women were at greater risk for unemployment than men in Spain and if women experienced less economic mobility as a result of the austerity policies adopted in Spain following the 2008 economic crisis.

Faculty Advisor: Mary Flanner

London, England

Most scholarly work on slam poetry examines the competitions within the context of only one country, out of conversation with other countries’ slam poetry culture. This undergraduate winter break project for an English Honors thesis explores the role of the poet and audience in slam poetry in two countries, the United States and the United Kingdom, to compare how these elements interplay in both countries’ cultural contexts.

Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris

Paris, France

The objective of this fall break research project was to carry out an examination of the early development of the centralizing financial institution in Paris, France. The project focused on the system of the Fermiers Généraux (royal tax collectors who also served as financiers) and the events leading to the emergence of a French national bank in 1801.

Faculty Advisor: Julia Douthwaite

Berlin, Germany

This undergraduate winter break project examined the impact of designed, isolating borders in a dense urban environment by studying the Berlin Wall’s architectural and cultural legacy. The project focused on what land was reclaimed from the Wall by Berliners, how the land was reclaimed, and how the Wall’s history has been celebrated and maintained. The project also suggests design remedies to areas that remain in disuse from the Wall’s deconstruction.

Faculty Advisor: Ettore Mazzola

Cortona, Italy; Valletta, Malta

This architectural winter break study sought to understand the influence of the Italian Renaissance ideals on the capital city of Malta. The project also studied the development of the work of Francesco Laparelli across national borders and project genres.

Faculty Advisor: Steven Semes

Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg, Sweden

Noting the Nordic cultural tendency to stick to the status quo, as evidenced by the prevalence of “Jantelagen,” which loosely means societal disapproval toward individuality and the prioritization of the collective, this undergraduate winter break project sought to understand consumer preferences and marketing strategies in this unique Swedish context. The project analyzed packaged goods in Swedish grocery stores in an effort to draw conclusions about the interplay between cultural tendencies for cohesion and the marketing impetus to stand out.

Faculty Advisor: Bob Essig

Madrid, Granada, and Toledo, Spain

This fall-break comparative project explored the strengths and weaknesses of the Catholic church in rural and urban Spanish communities with the role of the church in the United States. By analyzing statistics on mass attendance and parish size, as well as age demographics and religious identification the project shed light on the general trend amongst young people to leave the church both in Spain and the United States.

Faculty Advisor: Daniel Philpott