2022-2023
Marwa Katir, COL’25
Major: Computer Science and Economics
Project Name: Islam and Community
Project Description: The impact of immigration from Muslim-majority to minority countries on Muslims and their religious identity.
Dan Sachs, COL’24
Major: Linguistics
Project Name: Former Jews across Millenia
Project Description: The role of speech and writing by former Jews in the definition of ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish identity.
Matthew Shinnick, COL’25
Major: Government and Classics
Project Name: Power In the Name
Project Description: The role of names in religions and spirituality across the world, and the similarities found between them.
Nidhi Somineni, COL’25
Major: Linguistics
Project Name: Jal, Jangal, Jameen: The Adivasi Struggle for Linguistic and Religious Recognition
Project Description: The role of dominant languages and religions in the demonization and oppression of India’s tribal and indigenous groups.
Sofia Veljkovic, COL’25
Major: Linguistics & Theology
Project Name: A failure of civil religion
Project Description: Forced atheism in Yugoslavia failed to make a lasting impact due to the strength of religious tradition and faith.
2021-2022
Colleen Baer, COL’22
Major: Government and English
Project Name: The Sexual Abuse Crisis and Peace in Ireland
Project Description: Baer is investigating the impact of the church’s sex abuse crisis in Ireland on the on-going challenge of peace making in the North.
Kenzie Knight, COL’23
Major: Biology of Global Health
Project Name: Spirituality in Health Care during the COVID Pandemic
Project Description: Knight is exploring the correlation of spirituality and health through the context of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. She is investigating health outcomes for patients and their interaction with spirituality.
Mailí Janeth Mejia, MSB’22
Major: Marketing and International Business
Project Name: Class and Religion in Latin America
Project Description: Mejia is looking at the uses of religion in the social construction of understandings of and tolerance for poverty.
Rodrigo Perales Gris, COL’22
Major: Political Economy and Philosophy
Project Name: The Politics of Protestantism
Project Description: Perales Gris is investigating the intersection of political and theological ideas in the emergence of the sixteenth-century Reformations.
Jess Quinones, COL’23
Major: Biology of Global Health
Project Name: Popular Belief and Theological Doctrine; Healing Arts and Health Care
Project Description: Quinones is examining the impact of popular belief and religious teachings on inequities in seeking and receiving health care.
Andrii Sendziuk, MSB’24
Major: Finance and International Political Economy and Business
Project Name: The Impact of Christianity on Drug Use in Independent Ukraine
Project Description: Sendziuk is exploring in his project whether Christianity could decrease drug use and present a different coping mechanism for Ukrainians in the context of political and social instability since 1991.
2020-2021
Winston Ardoin, SFS’21
Major: Regional & Comparative Studies major with a concentration on Latin America and Africa
Project Name: Liberation Theology & the Push for Social Change in the Americas
Project Description: Through a lens informed by the theological writings of Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, Ardoin is studying how liberation theology inspired the actions and politics of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ELN member Camilo Torres Restrepo, and American missionary in Central America James Guadalupe Carney.
Tundaa Dorjnamjim, SFS’24
Major: International Economics
Project Name: The Paradox of Hindu Goddess Worship: How the Idealization of Hindu Goddesses Disempowers Modern Hindu Women
Project Description: Dorjnamjim is researching a wide range of Hindu rituals including pujas and social practices like chauupadi and the impact of these rituals on ordinary women using purity and auspiciousness as a measure of welfare.
Bakhita Fung, SFS’23
Major: International Political Economy
Project Name: Integral Human Development and the Capabilities Approach
Project Description: This paper seeks to bridge the religious versus secular divide in the field of development ethics. By comparing the framework of integral human development (Catholic teaching on development) and the capabilities approach, Fung sheds light on how scholars of both theories can work together to re-imagine development for the common good.
Mariana Guzman, SFS’24 & MSB’24
Major: International Political Economy and Business
Project Name: How The Absence of Catholicism in Mexico Failed Women
Project Description: Guzman is analyzing the role of the Catholic church in the Mexican wave of femicides stemming from the early ’90s to today. The project will analyze the relationship of the church with the femicide capital of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the larger Mexican population, and how the church can use their presence, going forward, to prevent similar humanitarian crises.
Lily McGrail, COL’21
Major: Government
Project Name: Theology and Morality in the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Project Description: McGrail is exploring the intersection of theology and morality in the actions of the IRA during the Troubles. She also hopes to investigate the religious motivations behind actions taken by Catholic priests that were either complicit in or opposed to the IRA’s terrorism.
Alex Cywes, SFS’23
Major: Science, Technology, and International Affairs
Project Name: Jewish Migration and Cultural Adaptation from South Africa since 1970
Project Description: Cywes’ project will center around the changes to the Jewish community in South Africa since the 1970s. It will also tie this to larger Jewish cultural adaptation and look for wider themes that link the global Jewish community.
2019-2020
Ankushi Mitra, Sarah Watson, AJ Degrado, Ana Ruiz, Maya James, and Amber Stanford.
Figge Final Presentations 2020
2018-2019
Kelsey Yurek, Marisa Putrasahan, Arin Chinnasathian, Benjamin Brazzel, Emma Bradley, and Justin Potisit
Figge Fellow Additional Achievements
Amber Stanford
From the 2019-2020 cohort, Amber has earned three additional awards from her fellowship. In 2021, Stanford won the Marshall Scholarship while exploring Black Women and Religious Movements. In the same year, Stanford also earned the Coakley Award at the Tropaia Awards Ceremony. In 2020, Stanford was selected for the Chester Gills Award. Stanford’s graduate studies continue from her Figge Fellowship.
A 2018-2019 Figge Fellow and Student Coordinator 2019-2020 & 2020-2021, Emma has had the opportunity to serve in Lesvos, Greece, alongside a Christian organization, Teach Beyond Borders, which uses educational programming to accompany displaced children and their families. Inspired by her research, this in-person experience (from July to August 2019) sparked a passion in Bradley for sustainable peacebuilding and the role of education in building cultures of peace to preempt refugee crises. This experience led Bradley to direct her subsequent years at Georgetown toward diplomacy and sustainable peacebuilding.