Cushwa Center announces research funding recipients for 2025
In 2025, the Cushwa Center is providing support to a record 33 researchers for a variety of projects. Funds are supporting visits to the University of Notre Dame Archives and at other research repositories in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and St. Paul, as well as international destinations including Dublin, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, and Venice.
The next application deadline for each of the Cushwa Center’s five research funding programs is December 31, 2025.
The Cyprian Davis, O.S.B., Prize
Established in 2020 in partnership with the American Catholic Historical Association, this prize recognizes outstanding research on the Black Catholic experience.
Karen Graubart
University of Notre Dame
“Making Malambo: Free Black Collectivity in Early Spanish America”
Mother Theodore Guerin Research Travel Grants
This program supports scholars whose research projects seek to feature Catholic women more prominently in modern history. Grants are made to scholars seeking to visit any repository in or outside the United States, or traveling to conduct oral history interviews, especially of women religious.
Tobias Awiti
Michigan State University
“Women and the Mau Mau (the Kenya Land and Freedom Army)”
Gabrielle Bibeau
Fordham University
“Archival Research with the Little Sisters of the Assumption in Paris”
Carol Coburn
Avila University
“Harbingers of Change: The Twenty-Year Collaboration of Two Midwestern Nuns”
Carolina Ellis
Independent Scholar
“Racial Justice and Healing: A History of the Medical Mission Sisters’ Involvement with the Catholic Colored Clinic/Holy Family Hospital in Atlanta, 1944–1972”
Kristen Hempstead McGann
Catholic Theological Union
“The Rome Model of Sacramental Preparation in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd”
Mary Kate Holman
Fairfield University
“The Prophetic Edge: Catholic Women Navigating Ecclesial Authority”
Alice Laburthe
Northwestern University
“Nuns, Settler Colonialism, and the Education of Indigenous Women: A Comparative Study of Civilizing Missions in 19th-Century North America and North Africa”
Chiadikaobi Gregory Okafor
Michigan State University
“Igbo Missionaries: Agency, Indigenous Evangelism, and the Making of Catholicism in Southeastern Nigeria, 1880s–2000s”
Amirah Orozco
University of Notre Dame
“Mujerista Theology in East Harlem: Ada María Isasi-Díaz at Our Lady Queen of Angels”
Jillian Schultz and Leah Thompson
Two Tigers Productions
Jonathan Singerton
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
“The St. Louis Ursulines: Their Influence and their Bavarian and Hungarian Origins”
Peter R. D’Agostino Research Travel Grants
Offered in conjunction with Italian Studies at Notre Dame and designed to facilitate the study of the American past from an international perspective, these grants support research in Roman archives for projects on U.S. Catholic history.
Shaun Blanchard
University of Notre Dame Australia
“Catholics, Not Papists: The Enlightened Cisalpines and the Quest for Religious Toleration”
Lauren Braun-Strumfels
Cedar Crest College
“The Forgotten Solution to America’s Immigration Problem: Italians, Distribution Policy, and the South in the Progressive Era”
Research Travel Grants
Research Travel Grants assist scholars who wish to visit the University Archives and other collections at Notre Dame for research relating to the study of Catholics in America.
S. M. Tanveer Ahmed
Washington State University
“Western Missionaries and Local Religions: Socio-Religious Transformation in Colonial Bengal, 1853–1947”
Clifford Ayegwalo
University of Vienna
“The Holy Manager: Priestly Formation and Images of the Catholic Priest According to Advice Literature in Late-19th-Century America”
Chelsea Ebin
Drew University
“Mapping the Influence of Conservative Catholic Political Thought on the American Right”
Sister Mary Martha Fe, O.S.F.
University of San Carlos
“The Life and Mission of Blessed Maria Theresia Bonzel and Her Impact on American Society”
Séverine Le Loarne
Nantes University
“RSCJ EXpansion (REX)”
Fernando López-Arias
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome, Italy)
“An American Reform? The U.S.-Rome Axis in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reform, 1964–1970”
John Maiden
The Open University
“Charismatic Renewal and Transnational Networks of Reconciliation in the Spirit”
Matías Maldonado Araya
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
“A Chilean Priest at the First Plenary Council of Baltimore (1852): Transnational Dynamics of the Chilean Church in the 19th Century”
Franklin Meyer
University of California, Davis
“Public Health and Secret Wars: Thomas Dooley and the Hmong Diaspora”
Nicolas Soto
University of Illinois at Chicago
“Seasonal Mexican Farmworkers and the Making of the Midwest Heartland, 1964–1994”
Ciaron Tobin
University of Cambridge
“American Parochial Education in the Late 19th Century: Navigating Ethnic Identities, Clericalist Proto-State, and Lay Apprehension”
Deanna Witkowski
Elmhurst University
“Jazz in the Pews: ‘Experiments in Sunday Worship’ in the 1960s”
Elise Wolff
Pennsylvania State University
“Institutionalizing Social Justice in Academia: Social Movement Origins and Scholar-Activism in the Field of Peace and Conflict Studies”
Mingfang Zhao
Pontifical Gregorian University
“Holy See–China: An International Case, 1946–1958”
Hibernian Research Awards
Funded by an endowment from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, Hibernian Research Awards support the scholarly study of Irish and Irish American history.
Alice Gorton
Columbia University
“Earth Hunger: Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Settler Grain Industry, 1865–1914”
Pádraig Ó Liatháin
Dublin City University
“Faith and Heritage: William J. Onahan, Irish Manuscripts, and Catholic Identity in Irish-America”
Evelyn Sterne
University of Rhode Island
“Faith in Crisis: Religion in Boston During the Great Depression”
Andrew Wilson
Loyola University Chicago
“Chicago’s Irish Nationalists and the Northern Ireland Conflict from Civil Rights to the Good Friday Agreement, 1968–1998”
This announcement appears in the spring 2025 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.
Originally published by at cushwa.nd.edu on March 20, 2025.
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