Meet the Fellows

Fr. Christopher Collins, S.J. is an assistant professor of theological studies at saint Louis University. He spent the last five years serving as the chief mission officer at SLU. He is the author of The Word Made Love: The Dialogical Theology of Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI (Liturgical Press, 2013) and 3 Moments of the Day: Praying with the Heart of Jesus (Ave Maria Press, 2014). He is currently working on a book on discernment of spirits in the Ignatian tradition for Ave Maria Press as well as a collected works of John Kavanaugh, S.J.

Rev. Robert S. Gerlich, S.J. obtained his B.A. degree in Philosophy from St. Louis University (1972), M.A. in European History from Saint Louis University (1977); Bakkalaureat in Catholic Theology from Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (1980) and Ph.D in Modern European History from Saint Louis University (1987). Prior to coming to Loyola in 1989, Fr. Gerlich was a member of the editorial and research staff of the Encyclopedia of Jesuit History project under the direction of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome, Italy (1987-1988). From 1989 to the present, he has been an associate professor of history at Loyola University New Orleans. He is spending the Fall Semester 2020, at the Institute, where he is translating and evaluating a new biography of St. Ignatius by Enrique García Hernán for possible publication.

Sonia Isidori received her Ph. D. in 2017 at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Naples, Italy), where her dissertation explored the relationship between the Society of Jesus in the Viceroyalty of Peru and the local Inquisition of Lima (1568-1615). She holds a two-semester fellowship at the Institute. While at the Institute, she will study the Litterae indipetae, written during the generalate of Muzio Vitelleschi (1615-1645). Her research will contribute to the Digital Indipetae Database.

Louise Rice is Associate Professor of Art History at New York University. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, she specializes in the art and architecture of seventeenth-century Italy and has a particular interest in the history of prints and print culture. Her publications include The Altars and Altarpieces of New St. Peter's. Outfitting the Basilica, 1621-1666 (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and, with Joseph Connors, Specchio di Roma barocca. Una guida inedita del XVII secolo (Edizioni dell'Elefante, 1991), as well as numerous essays, articles and reviews on aspects of Roman baroque art and culture.

While at the Institute, Rice is preparing 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. The genre originated and saw its finest flowering in the schools run by the Jesuits, and as one might expect under the circumstances, it is characterized by highly inventive, intricate, and entertaining iconography. By providing an introduction to this little understood and largely neglected category of printed image, Rice aims to make accessible a veritable goldmine of visual and poetic material of potential interest not only to art historians but to scholars in a wide range of disciplines, including literature, music, and science.

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).

Claudio Ferlan (Ph.D., Università degli studi di Trieste) came to the Institute for one-semester while a full-time researcher at the Italian-German Historical Institute (Bruno Kessler Foundation) in Trento, Italy. With his one-semester fellowship, Ferlan conducted archival research and wrote on the food habits of Jesuit missionaries as part of his larger book project on the history of the Society of Jesus.

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 coordinate the 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)--an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University--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), now available at Jesuit Sources.

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.

Eugenio Menegon (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) came to the Institute as an Associate Professor of History at Boston University and having directed the university's Center for the Study of Asia. He used his fellowship to study the daily life and political networking of European residents (especially Jesuits of the French and Portuguese missions) at the Qing court in Beijing during the 17th-18th centuries. His personal website is available at: http://blogs.bu.edu/emenegon/

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 available at Jesuit Historiography Online.

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 now available at Jesuit Sources. He also wrote a historiographical essay on Jesuit devotional literature, which is available at Jesuit Historiography Online.