Fordham University
Candidate for Executive Council Graduate Student Representative (2027-29)
Candidate statement
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in Theology at Fordham University. My dissertation examines the theology of healing and suffering among the Little Sisters of the Assumption, an order of French nursing sisters, in their communities in Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires from 1865 to 1920. My broader research interests include spiritual approaches to health and healing, material religion, and the study of global Catholicism. I have been a regular contributor to Global Sisters Report, a project of the National Catholic Reporter, and I have also written reviews for The Catholic Historical Review and Church History. My recent article in the Journal of Global Catholicism, “The Untameability of the Sacred: Votive Traditions at Notre Dame de Lourdes and El Santuario de Chimayó,” compares votive practices at these two shrines within their distinct cultural and historical contexts. I am also a second year Doctoral Fellow of the Louisville Institute, which offers professionalization and formational training for doctoral 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 with a team 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 young scholars, 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.