Current Cohort

Figge Fellows: Current Cohort
Meet the group of students participating in the Figge Fellowship through their courses of study and brief descriptions of their projects.

Nouran Alim (CAS’25)
Herndon, Virginia
Biochemistry

“The Good Death and Clinical Trials”: How modern human clinical research can be understood from the lens of different religious backgrounds and their views on martyrdom and suffering.

Catherine dell’Olio (CAS’25)
New York, New York

“Environmental Biology and Philosophy”: The cosmological implications and effects of Earth-as-mother imagery in Christian tradition and social teaching.

Emma Manetta (CAS’26)
Downey, California
Anthropology

“The Indigenous Experience in Higher Education”: Exploring the Indigenous experience in higher education through the lens of data-informed practices and Jesuit values, with a focus on how principles like cura personalis can address colonial legacies—such as the use of blood quantum metrics in data collection—to develop resources that support Indigenous student success.

CC Mesa (SFS’26)
Los Angeles, California
International History

“El Sacerdote Comandante: Catholic Priests in the Cuban Revolution”: Examining the relationship between the Catholic Church, the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and Liberation Theology focusing on Fr. Guillermo Sardiñas, also known as El Sacerdote Comandante (the commander priest) and his relationship with Castro’s guerrilla revolutionary forces

Mohamed Meshal (SFS’27)
Wilkes-Barre, PA
International Politics

“Non-Secular Secularism: Government Authority Over Religious Insitions in the Middle East”: This project will focus on how governments in the Arab Middle East have controlled and subverted traditionally independent religious institutions to further secular and political agendas.

Ajay Nathan (SFS’25)
Marietta, Georgia
Science, Technology, and International Affairs

“Are they God’s choice?”: A comparative study and analysis of the role of religion across United States presidential elections.

Mary Nguyen (CAS’25)
Houston, Texas
Environmental Biology

“The Fall: Saigon, Cambodia, and An Eternity of Land Loss in Southeast Asia”: Illuminating religious and spirit-centered discourses as they legitimize and challenge historical and contemporary state land-grabbing objectives in Southeast Asia.

Sarah Grace Shurden (SFS’26)
Madison, Mississippi
Regional and Comparative Studies

“Church Organization and the Mississippi Chinese”: An investigation into what Christianity, in particular participation at Protestant churches in the South, has meant to the Mississippi Chinese community, with specific reference to their ability to gain credence in white communities.

Walker McCarthy (CAS’26)
Greenwich, Connecticut
Theology & Religious Studies

“Divine Justice? Christian Influences on the American Criminal Legal System”: Charting the rise of the religious right and mass incarceration in the United States