Meet the Fellows

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.He holds a Bachelor in Theology from the University of Deusto, an STL in Systematic Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, an MBA in Higher Education Management from the Institute of Education (then at the University of London, now at UCL), and a doctorate in Industrial Engineering from the University of the Basque Country.In the past years he has written about Ignatian Leadership, with a special focus on the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, on Higher Education Management, and on St. Francis Xavier. At the Institute he will continue to do research 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. In 2003, he obtained his PhD in Philosophy from Peking University, presenting a thesis on Liang Shuming. From 2003 to 2006, he taught philosophy at Fordham University, New York. Since 2006, he is a member of the Macau Ricci Institute. He has authored twenty academic articles and a dozen of essays.

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Macerata, Eötvös Loránd University) is using her fellowship to work on the edition and translation into English of the unpublished autobiography of Giulio Mancinelli (1537-1618), who established the first Jesuit mission in Constantinople.

Alessandro Corsi (Ph.D. “Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore” of Milan) specializes in qualitative and quantitative historical analysis of Ancien Régime social structures, observed through the lens of digital tools.

During his semester fellowship at the Institute, Corsi will continue the development of a database based on Triennales and Breves registration catalogs of the Old Society, which he started during his postdoctoral research held at Fondazione 1563 between 2019–2021 (La rete culturale dei professori gesuiti nella Provincia Mediolanensis durante il XVII secolo. Docenze mobilità e scambi eruditi nell’élite intellettuale della Compagnia di Gesù tra Piemonte Liguria e Lombardia in età barocca (1615-1730), 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 editor-in-chief of FBK Magazine. 

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 Jesuit Sources. 

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 Digital Indipetae Database, 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, titled Habits 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 prepared a 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.