Meet the Fellows
Fellowships are awarded to scholars in the fields of history, spirituality, and pedagogy, among others, to facilitate the completion and/or publication of academic work related to the Society of Jesus.
2024–2025 Fellows
Silvia Mostaccio(PhD, University of Padua, Italy) is professor of Early Modern History at UCLouvain, Belgium. She is interested in cultural and social history through religious and gender studies. After studying the Jesuit system of obedience in the Society of Jesus, Silvia coordinated a collective research project on Ignatian women religious congregations. For some years now, she has been studying the European missions of the Society of Jesus, particularly the military mission to the Spanish army in Flanders during the Wars of Religion (late 16th and early 17th centuries). Her general project is entitled:Living with violence in wartime. Gender, Religion and Resilience in Early Modern Spanish Europe. Silvia considers the Jesuit mission to Catholic armies as a co-constructed action between the missionaries and the missioned (the men, but also the women and children who lived with the soldiers). She explores the power relations (ecclesiastical and military) and the devotional creativity of missionaries and lay people who needed a faith capable of giving meaning to the violence they endured or inflicted on others. Together with Alessandro Serra, Silvia is currently preparing a book to be published by the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies:Jesuit Military Missionaries in Northern Europe.
Sabina Pavoneis Full Professor in History of Christianity at the University of Naples L’Orientale. Her research area is situated at the intersection of various disciplines: institutional history, religious history and cultural history andfocuses on two areas: the first concerns the penetration of Catholicism into Poland and Russia in the modern age, while the second is aimed at investigatingthe relationship between the religious orders, especially Jesuits, and the Roman Inquisition, mostly in the Indian missions.She is in the Scientific Board of theJournal of Jesuit Studies,Jesuit Studies, and theDigital Indipetae Database. She is also in the Board of Directors of theSociété Intérnational d’études jésuitesin Paris. Among her works are:The Wily Jesuits(2005);I gesuiti dalle origini alla soppressione(2nd ed., 2021);Sacre metamorfosi. Racconti di conversione tra Roma e il mondo in etàmoderna(2022);Eloquent Images. Evangelization, Conversions and Propaganda in the Global World of the Early Modern Period(2022); andLessico della storia moderna(2024).During her semester fellowship at the Institute, Pavone will continue her project on the Jesuits martyrs in India and the beatification and canonization processes.
Past Fellows
Francisco Mota, S.J. of the Portuguese Province, is an IAJS Fellow. For the past seven years, he oversaw Brotéria – a Jesuit cultural center in downtown Lisbon. He also served as a parish priest, the Vice-President of Jesuit Refugee Service in Portugal, the President of a parish school, and a member of the Province’s Finance board.
Jesus Folgado-Garcia, is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. He holds a ThD from the San Damaso Ecclesiastical University (Madrid,Spain). He is a professor at the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University (Lima, Peru) and visiting professor at the San Damaso Ecclesiastical University. During his fellowship at the Institute, he produced a video documentary on the Jesuit Diego de Pantoja.
José M. Guibert, S.J., is the in-residence fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, while he is also the Gasson Professor at Boston College for the year 2023-2024. He has served for ten years (2013-2023) as Rector (President) at the University of Deusto in Spain. He joins the Institute during his sabbatical, after 25 years on administrative assignments. During his fellowship he conducted research and wrote on both St. Francis Xavier and Ignatian Leadership.
Thierry Meynard, S.J.,is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies. He is currently professor and PhD director at the philosophy department of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, where he teaches Western Philosophy and Latin Classics. He is the vice-director of the Archive for Introduction of Western Knowledge, at Sun Yat-Sen University. In 2012-2014, he was also the director of The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies, a study program established by the Jesuits in 1998.
Silvia Notarfonso(PhD Università degli Studi di Macerata, Eötvös Loránd University) is using her fellowship to work on the edition and translation into English of the unpublished autobiography of Giulio Mancinelli (1537-1618), who established the first Jesuit mission in Constantinople.
Sergio Gadeais a priest of the Society of Jesus (SJ). He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in Philosophy at the Hochschule für Philosophie in Munich. His project focuses on the thought of the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and his use of the concept of 'agape'. Using his work, the main focus is to explore how the recovery of Christian resources can help to address some contemporary problems, such as disputes about recognition, the foundations of altruism or the dialogue in societies between individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives on life. Sergio Gadea has studied Philosophy and Theology at the Universidad Pontificia "Comillas" in Madrid.
Alessandro Corsi(Ph.D. “Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore” of Milan) specializes in qualitative and quantitative historical analysis ofAncien Régimesocial structures, observed through the lens of digital tools.
During his semester fellowship at the Institute, Corsi will continue the development of a database based onTriennalesandBreves registration catalogsof the Old Society, which he started during his postdoctoral research held at Fondazione 1563 between 2019–2021 (,Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura della Compagnia di San Paolo, Torino 2022).
Jose M. Cruz, S.J.(Ph.D. Cornell University) has served as Vice President for University and Global Relations at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He joins the Institute during his sabbatical, after 21 years on administrative assignments.
During his time at the Institute, Cruz will be researching the transfer of leadership of the Philippine Mission from the Aragon Province to the Maryland-New York Province, in the years 1921–1927 and onwards. In addition, Cruz will be researching the experience of the Aragon Province Jesuits in their new assignment, the Bombay Mission. With the large narrative written up, he is focusing now on the experience of the Spanish and American Jesuits, who needed an extended period in order for them to work with each other productively.
Claudio Ferlan (Ph.D. University of Trieste) is a full-time researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy, where he is also working as.
Ferlan was a fellow at the Institute for a semester in 2019 to conduct research on the food history of the Society of Jesus in the early modern Atlantic world.He returns to the IAJS in the Spring 2022 semester to complete a project that will lead to the publication of a handbook of Jesuit history from Ignatius to Bergoglio with.
Sonia Isidori (Ph.D. University of Naples "L'Orientale")held a two-semester fellowship at the Institute during the 2020–2021 academic year. She worked on the, especially on the letters written during the long generalate of Muzio Vitelleschi (1615–1645). Through these letters, Dr. Isidori explored the Jesuit reactions to the creation of the Congregation "De Propaganda Fide" (1622) and the Jesuit vocation to martyrdom during the Sicilian plague of 1624–26.
She returns to the Institute for the Fall of 2021 to continue her work with the Digital Indipetae Database. See the first Digital Indipetae Newsletter for more information about their works.
Fr. Christopher Collins, S.J.(Ph.D., Boston College) held a semester fellowship with the Institute, where he completed his latest book with Ave Maria Press, titledHabits of Freedom. He now serves as the Vice President for Mission at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota.
Rev. Robert S. Gerlich, S.J.(Ph.D., Saint Louis University) held a one semester fellowship at the Institute, where he worked on translating and evaluating a new biography of St. Ignatius by Enrique García Hernán. He now works as an associate editor for the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies.
Louise Rice(Ph.D., Columbia University) held a semester fellowship with the Institute where she prepareda typological and cultural history of Roman thesis prints and the festive academic context for which they were made. Thesis prints, or "conclusions" as they were usually called in the seventeenth-century, are elaborate dedicatory images commissioned to decorate the thesis broadsheets of students undergoing a public academic defense at a college or university.
Christoph Sander(Ph.D.,Technische Universität Berlin) was a postdoctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome) when he came to the Institute. He devoted his semester fellowship to preparing a digital edition of a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript, which contains the first monographic treatise on magnetism and was written by the Jesuit, Leonardo Garzoni (1543-1592).
Hilmar Pabel(Ph.D., Yale University) was a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada when he used his fellowship to finish chapters of his book on the literary career of Peter Canisius. His semester's research focused on Canisius’ polemical treatises on St. John the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin Mary, available in a 1583 edition at Boston College’s Burns Library.
Marco Rochini (Ph.D.,Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano) held a two-semester fellowship at the Institute. He used his time both to coordinatethe launch of the Digital Indipetae Database and to finish a book project on the first indipetae written during the "New" Society of Jesus, providing historical context of the Jesuit petitions appearing in the open-access database.
Andrew Barrette (Ph.D., Southern Illinois University Carbondale) held a two-semester fellowship at the Institute. At the Institute, Barrette researched Jesuits in Leuven at the turn to the 20th century, focusing especially on Joseph Maréchal and Pierre Scheuer. Along with editing some of their work, he prepared further research into the missionary and ecumenical work of the students of this school.
Laura Madella(Ph.D., Università Roma Tre) came to the Institute while serving as a research assistant at Università degli Studi di Parma. She used her fellowship at the Institute to research the Jesuits' triennial catalogs, which recorded information about every Jesuit since the 16th century.
Emanuele Colombo(Ph.D., University of Milan and Padua) is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University. Dr. Colombo used his fellowship at the Institute to begin work on a digital database of the indipetae, those letters written by Jesuits to the Superior General of the Society of Jesus to apply for the missions overseas.
Aislinn Muller(Ph.D., University of Cambridge) wrote her doctoral dissertation on the papal excommunication and deposition of Queen Elizabeth I in 1570. While at the Institute, she wrote about the political and religious implications of Queen Elizabeth’s excommunication for the Jesuit missions and began a new project that examines the role of material culture in those missions to early modern England.
Peter Nguyen, S.J.,(Ph.D., St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto) came to the Institute as an Assistant Professor of Theology at Creighton University. He used his fellowship to write a book on the writings and theology of Alfred Delp.
Elisa Frei(Ph.D., Università degli Studi di Udine) worked with Simon Ditchfield at the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York before coming to the Institute. She used to her fellowship to develop doctoral dissertation into a monographic-length publication and to write several articles.
Barbara Ganson(Ph.D., University of Texas-Austin) came to the Institute as a Professor of History and Director of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She used her fellowship at the Institute to complete a new English translation and edited volume of Antonio Ruiz de Montoya’s Conquista espiritual hecha por los religiosos de la Compañía de Jesús en las provincias del Paraguay, Paraná, Uruguay y Tape (1639), .
Francisco Malta Romeiras(Ph.D., Universidade de Lisboa) used his fellowship at the Institute to complete a book on Jesuit science and education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He also wrote an essay on the history of the Society of Jesus in Portugal, from the sixteenth century to present times.
Jeffrey Muller(Ph.D., Yale University) came to the Institute as a Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. He used his fellowship to research the Jesuits' global strategy of accommodation and to write a historiographical essay on Jesuit visual culture, which is
Cinthia Gannett(Ph.D., University of New Hampsire) came to the Institute as an Associate Professor of English and Director of Core Writing at Fairfield University. She used her fellowship to research on a historiography essay on Jesuit rhetoric.
Charles Keenan(Ph.D., Northwestern University) used his fellowship at the Institute to complete a translation and annotated edition of The Exercise of a Christian Life (Esercitio della vita christiana, 1557), a devotional treatise written by Gaspar Loarte, S.J., which is . He also wrote a historiographical essay on Jesuit devotional literature, which is