Fordham University
Candidate for Executive Council Graduate Student Representative (2026-28)
Candidate statement
I am a third-year PhD student in Theology at Fordham University. My primary research interests are Catholic nursing sisters in late nineteenth-century France, spiritual approaches to health and healing, material religion, and the intersection between art, spirituality, and popular culture. I have been a regular contributor to Global Sisters Report, and I have also written reviews for the Catholic Historical Review and Church History. I currently have an article in the final stages of publication for the Journal of Global Catholicism that is a comparative study of votive practices at El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico and Our Lady of Lourdes in France. I was also recently awarded a two year Doctoral Fellowship by the Louisville Institute, which offers formational training for Theological Educators alongside other graduate students.
Before my PhD program at Fordham, I spent seven years in formation as a Marianist Sister and was a Research and Program Assistant at the North American Center for Marianist Studies in Dayton, Ohio. Both of these experiences taught me a variety of skills, particularly how to work collaboratively to enact a common mission. I would value the opportunity to use these skills of collaboration and organization as a graduate student representative on the Executive Council. I treasure the warm community of the American Catholic Historical Association, particularly its outreach to graduate students, and I would be honored to continue this outreach as a graduate student representative. I look forward to the possibility of serving ACHA’s mission of fostering Catholic historical research and enlivening the collegial community that makes this scholarship possible.