2023 Research Report of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies

2023 Research Report

A Review of Faculty, Student, and Institute-Led Research

The Nanovic Institute for European Studies 2023 Research Report

Overview

The Nanovic Institute fosters learning and research within a community of scholars and students at the University of Notre Dame and beyond. As an academic unit dedicated to European studies, it has a research responsibility and faces the challenge of establishing a research profile.

The institute, particularly in collaboration with its faculty fellows, has deep expertise in history, theology, philosophy, political science, the fine arts, and many European languages and cultures. As a core academic unit within the Keough School of Global Affairs, Nanovic is poised to make significant contributions to a deeper understanding of integral human development and to the intersection of humanities and policy, particularly in ways that foster a deeper understanding of Europe and its peoples.

Two main avenues shape the institute’s contribution to research in European studies:

a. supporting research of faculty fellows, visiting scholars, and students; and

b. coordinating research projects and research initiatives.

During the past academic year, the institute expanded its research portfolio in ways that align with its strategic plan for 2021-26. This work included identifying core research priorities, supporting significant research projects, securing new grants, and developing several new research initiatives in collaboration with faculty and students both at Notre Dame and in Europe.

European Studies

The landscape of European studies is shaped by humanities-based approaches to historical and normative questions, contemporary political and economic aspects explored through social sciences, and—especially with the challenges of climate change—contributions by the sciences to the ecological situation and future of Europe. A few examples of signature conferences and book awards may provide insight into key areas of European studies today:

• The 28th International Conference of Europeanists (Lisbon, June 2022) was dedicated to “The Environment of Democracy” with panels on climate change and democracy, decolonizing European studies, and globalization.

• The European Studies Council (ESC) of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University dedicated its 4th annual international interdisciplinary conference of the European Studies Graduate Fellows in May 2023 to the topic “Beyond the ‘Communist Bloc’: New Approaches to Studying Europe, Russia, and Eurasia.”

• The 18th Biennial International Conference of the European Union Studies Association (Pittsburgh, May 2023) discussed the topic of the European Union as a Comparative Polity and an Interdisciplinary Subject following their 2022 conference entitled “Recovery and Reconnection: European Integration against the Tide.”

• The 29th International Conference of Europeanists (Reykjavik, June 2023) discussed “big questions” of Europe, namely “Europe’s Past, Present, and Future: Utopias and Dystopias.”

• The fifth Annual Conference on European Studies in June 2023, held at the ETH Zurich, was dedicated to “Europe in Unchartered Territories.” The conference had a particular focus on North-South, East-West, and rural-urban divides in Europe and dealt with the financial infrastructure of Europe, European governance, inequality and

polarization, migration, climate change and energy policies, and with the economic, social, and political impact of COVID-19 and the Ukraine war.

These conference themes offer a sense of contemporary discourses in European studies. Issues of European (political and social) integration and migration, democracy, peace, and climate change, as well as meta-questions like grand visions of Europe and the future of (decolonized) European studies shape the landscape of European studies today. This is also confirmed by some important book awards:

• The winner of the 2022 European Studies Book Award (awarded by the Council for European Studies to honor the work of talented scholars who have written their first book on any subject in European studies) is Martina Cvajner for her book Soviet Signoras: Personal and Collective Transformations in Eastern European Migration (University of Chicago Press, 2019), an ethnographic study dedicated to migrant lives and stories of Central and Eastern European badanti (care-in workers for elder Italians).

• Elena Baracani won the 2022 University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) Best Book Prize (awarded annually for the book that has made the most substantial and original contribution to knowledge in the area of contemporary European studies) for her study: EU-Turkey Relations: A New Direction for EU Foreign Policy (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021).

• The Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies announced that Klaus Richter’s Fragmentation in East Central Europe: Poland and the Baltics, 1915-1929 (Oxford University Press, 2020) has been awarded the 2022 AABS Book Prize.

• Jana Costas’ book Dramas of Dignity: Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin (Cambridge University Press, 2022) won the European Group for Organizational Studies Book Award 2023.

The big question of “How can we live together while respecting human dignity and the fragility of the planet?” drives many research projects within European studies.

In conversation with this big question, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies has identified core research priorities. Notre Dame faculty and students in the humanities, arts, sciences, and social sciences have collaborated with the institute to engage with these long-term priorities.

Research Priorities

The institute’s research priorities include five key areas:

• Big Questions about Europe and Humanity: The Nanovic Institute is particularly interested in questions that pose major moral challenges with implications for European identities and values, politics and society, and the history and future shared by European nations and peoples. Examples include normative and spiritual traditions in Europe, resilient democracies, and migration and the ethics of borders. Projects underway include an initiative on “Decolonizing Scholarship” (with a speaker series and a subsequent book project) and an international research project on “resilient communities” with colleagues at Catholic universities from Central and Eastern Europe through the institute’s Catholic Universities Partnership. Because of its links with the Ukrainian Catholic University, the institute is engaged in joint research on postwar Europe (i.e. Europe after the end of the war in Ukraine).

• Human Dignity: As part of the Keough School of Global Affairs with its commitment to integral human development and human dignity, the Nanovic Institute is interested in exploring the meaning and implications of the idea of the dignity of each human person. The institute is concerned with research on the respect and safeguarding of the dignity of all, especially the most vulnerable, including migrants, children, and

people with disabilities. Europe’s history contains many terrible violations of human dignity, particularly through colonialism, but European traditions can also offer important contributions to the concept and institutional translation of human dignity. A corresponding research initiative of the Nanovic Institute is the systematic exploration of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights with regard to violations of Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”).

• Peripheries: The Nanovic Institute is committed to enlarging the map with research and dialogue that encompasses the lived experience of all people in Europe, including those marginalized by geography, poverty, policies of citizenship, and difference. The institute aims to develop a theoretical framework for understanding peripheries, including spatial, structural, social and political, and epistemic peripheries, as well as to establish a methodological and ethical approach to the study of areas or groups underrepresented in research and the public perception. A major project underway is a handbook on peripheries in European studies, coordinated by the institute. The Institute is also leading three pilot studies exploring “peripheries,” with sites in Partizánska Ľupča, a rural village in Slovakia, in Gaelteach (Irish-speaking) communities in Western Ireland, and in L’Arche communities in Italy. In April 2023, the institute also organized a signature conference “Reimagining Europe from Its Peripheries,” coordinated by faculty Korey Garibaldi, Francisco Robles, and Perin Gürel.

• Memory and Remembering: The Nanovic Institute is interested in projects investigating the politics and ethics of remembrance in contemporary Europe. This focus encompasses research related to national memories of racial violence and injustice, memory and reconciliation in postwar societies, and contested memory spaces, such as monuments. For the institute and its colleagues, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, post-

Holocaust and Socialist memory are of particular interest, as are questions about the ways in which different communities in Europe represent their diverse histories. After organizing an international workshop in November 2022, the institute is coordinating a book publication that brings together case studies of monuments and sites of commemoration across the European continent. This topic has gained public attention in Europe after the iconic toppling of Edward Colston’s statue by anti-racist protesters in Bristol in June 2020.

• Faith and Religion in Europe: The Nanovic Institute is committed to contributing to the University of Notre Dame’s Catholic mission. The institute recognizes that this university has a particular interest in matters of religious faith, faith-based actors, and the interaction between religion and state. Within this research priority, the institute considers questions around the role of faith in Europe today and the ways in which religious traditions and institutions continue to shape Europe. With its historical focus on Central and Eastern Europe, the institute is coordinating an international research project on “Faith and Freedom,” exploring the role of the Church in the transition from communism to post-communism. Additionally, the institute supports research on the role of religion in the war in Ukraine as part of a larger research interest in Ukrainian studies.

Spotlight: “Peripheries” and European Studies

The Nanovic Institute has decided to pursue the concept of “peripheries” as a key analytical lens to offer unique contributions to European studies.

The decision to focus on “peripheries” is based on the use of the term by Pope Francis. In his Pre-Conclave speech then-Cardinal Bergoglio expressed the invitation and imperative to “go out to the peripheries.” In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis connects the idea of reaching “all the ‘peripheries’” with the idea of leaving “our own comfort zone.” What could that mean for European studies?

Exploring marginalized persons, places, traditions, and ideas could offer new insights into European studies with terms like “inner peripheries,” “marginalizing effects,” or “decentering the center.” Pamela Ballinger has argued for the usefulness of the periphery lens to shed light on recombinations and intersections of well-established distinctions such as North versus South, East versus West. This lens is fruitful to understand the changing spatial, political, and cultural landscapes of Europe;1 it is “useful to frame the contemporary challenges of development in terms of peripherality.”2 Countries like Finland, Gibraltar, Malta, and Lampedusa (to name but a few) or regions of South East Europe are often framed as peripheral.3 Peripheries can refer to “in between” people and “in between spaces” in Europe. Ilaria Giglioli, for instance, describes Tunisian migrants in Sicily and their peripheral status. Harry Karahalios has offered an indepth study of Spain and Greece in their efforts to emphasize the affiliation with (a certain understanding of) Europe and to

1 Pamela Ballinger, “Whatever Happened to Eastern Europe? Revisiting Europe’s Eastern Peripheries,” East European Politics and Societies 31, no. 1 (February 2017): 44–67; see also Pamela Ballinger, “Recursive Easts, Shifting Peripheries: Whither Europe’s ‘Easts’ and ‘Peripheries’?” East European Politics and Societies 31, no. 1 (February 2017): 3-10.

2 Andrew M. Fischer, “The End of Peripheries? On the Enduring Relevance of Structuralism for Understanding Contemporary Global Development,” Development and Change 46, no. 4 (July 2015): 700–732, 704.

3 See Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

de-emphasize their cultural connections with non-Western nations like Morocco and Turkey.4 There is, indeed, value in making use of the category of peripheries in European studies.

The term “peripheries,” however, is contested. It is connected to theories of economic polarization, social inequality, and political marginalization. The modern discourse on peripheries dates back to the 1950s when Raul Prebisch published a report for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America where he contrasted the (economically) developed center with the (economically) underdeveloped (or even undeveloped) periphery.5 He consistently applied the model of a privileged center and an underprivileged periphery to his analysis of the Latin American economic context. He pointed to a connection between inequality and injustice in describing the dynamics of unequal exchange as the cause of a flow of surplus value from the periphery to the center. In many cases, urbanization and industrialization widen—or perhaps even create—the core/ periphery divide.

This concern with inequality is also featured in Immanuel Wallenstein’s theory of core and periphery where he underscored that core and periphery are inextricably linked—the center would not function as a center without the periphery.6 This is not to say that peripheries, in Wallenstein’s model, would not be less productive, less innovative, or less influential than the centers, but there is a recognition of the constitutive role of peripheries in the making of the core. Wallenstein’s theory of the world system uses the idea of a global division of labor which structures the world into core, periphery, and semi-periphery. Paul Robin Krugman has emphasized in his approach to the core/ periphery model that the development of the core can happen at the expense of the peripheries. A

4 Ilaria Giglioli, “On Not Being European Enough. Migration, Crisis and Precarious Livelihoods on the Periphery of Europe,” Social & Cultural Geography 22, no. 5 (2021): 725-744; Harry Karahalios, “Differentiating National Identities: Cultures of Immigration in Europe’s Peripheries” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2012).

5 Raúl Prebisch, The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (Lake Success, NY: United Nations Department of Economic Affairs, 1950).

6 Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16, no. 4 (September 1974): 387-415.

large market attracts more and better qualified workers which leads to a mobility that weakens the peripheries.7 This is a strong reminder that “core” and “periphery” are not equal partners.

Models like the ones proposed by Prebisch and Wallenstein deepen the negativity that surrounds the term “peripheries”; it carries negative associations, and it points to areas that are characterized by reduced access, limited infrastructure, increased precariousness, and substantial vulnerability. “The peripheries are associated with distance, difference, and dependence on external aid and the unfavorable phenomenon of marginalization and deprivation,”8 and also dependence, disconnection, poverty, outmigration, and a lack of resources to sustain their own growth over time.9

Even though “peripheries” seem to suggest a spatial metaphor, they can be conceptualized as processes of marginalization: “peripheralization refers to a spatially organized inequality of power relations and access to material and symbolic goods that constructs and perpetuates the precedence of the centres over areas that are marginalized.”10 These processes challenge established core-periphery models that “tend to remain rigid, dualistic, state-centric, and blind to the many networked, splintered, and modular economic and political flows that constitute the dynamics of contemporary globalization.”11 Peripheries are not discovered, they are invented, created—through the interaction of institutions and social actors.12 This can be an interesting lens to apply to European studies

7 Cf. Paul R. Krugman, “Intraindustry Specialization and the Gains from Trade,” Journal of Political Economy 89, no. 5 (October 1981): 959-973; Paul R. Krugman, “Increasing Returns and Economic Geography,” Journal of Political Economy 99, no. 3 (June 1998): 483-499; Paul R. Krugman, “What’s New about the New Economic Geography?”, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 14, no. 2 (June 1998): 7-17.

8 Magdalena Klimczuk-Kochańska and Andrzej Klimczuk, “Core-Periphery Model,” in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies, eds. Scott N Romaniuk, Manish Thapa, and Péter Marton (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2019), 1–8, 2.

9 Cf. Manfred Kühn and Matthias Bernt, “Peripheralization and Power – Theoretical Debates,” in Peripheralization: The Making of Spatial Dependencies and Social Injustice, eds. Andrea Fischer-Tahir and Matthias Naumann (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2013), 302-317.

10 Andrea Fischer-Tahir and Matthias Naumann, “Introduction: Peripheralization as a Social Production of Spatial Dependencies and Injustice,” in Fischer-Tahir and Naumann, Peripheralization, 9-26, 18.

11 Majed Akhter, “The Proliferation of Peripheries: Militarized Drones and the Reconfiguration of Global Space,” Progress in Human Geography 43, no. 1 (February 2019): 64–80, 66.

12 Cf. Karl-Dieter Keim, “Peripherisierung ländlicher Räume,” Politik und Zeitgeschichte 37 (June 2006): 3-7.

There is much conceptual work that has to be done. Rhiannon Pugh and Alexandre Dubois identify problems with the discourse on peripheries in economic geography:13 the fuzzy language problem (no clear definition of “peripheries”), the problem of “bad talking peripheries” (“peripheries often fall prey to a simplifying and negative discourse. They are often ‘othered’”14), the problem of a static and generalized view, and the problem of unequal peripheries (peripheries are gendered, raced, and classed).

Peripheries are also ambivalent. They may be deprived of certain aspects of technological and global transformation, but at the same time, they can be contexts with special potential for innovation.15 They may be both difficult to access and difficult to control: “In the context of social peripheralization, regions and their populations are produced as spaces which are negatively affected by a lower quality of life and fewer decision-making options. At the same time, they are considered free and less regulated. It is precisely this meaning of free space and emptiness that can be used creatively.”16 Peripherality can be both imposed and chosen. Peripheries can be less desirable than centers, but at the same time peripheries can be attractive—as tourist destinations or as production sites, since the inequality of wage levels may make it attractive for businesses to relocate production to peripheral areas.17

One of the most interesting ways to look at peripheries is an epistemological one: peripheries as view points that challenge the established perspectives and epistemic cultures. “Views from the Edge” are discussions of a phenomenon from the non-mainstream perspective. We could think,

13 Rhiannon Pugh and Alexandre Dubois, “Peripheries within Economic Geography: Four ‘Problems’ and the Road Ahead of Us,” Journal of Rural Studies 87 (October 2021): 267-275.

14 Pugh and Dubois, “Peripheries within Economic Geography,” 270.

15 Jakob Eder, “Innovation in the Periphery: A Critical Survey and Research Agenda,” International Regional Science Review 42, no. 2 (March 2019): 119-146; Martin Graffenberger and Lukas Vonnahme, “Questioning the ‘Periphery Label’ in Economic Geography: Entrepreneurial Action and Innovation in South Estonia,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geography 18, no. 2 (May 2019): 529-550.

16 Julia van Lessen and Sandra Petermann, “Peripheries. Playgrounds of Society,” img journal 3, no. 5 (October 2021): 216-237, 231.

17 Wilson O. Simon, “Centre-Periphery Relationship In the Understanding of Development of Internal Colonies,” International Journal of Economic Development Research and Investment 2, no. 1 (April 2011): 147-156, 148.

for example, of Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe’s fiction on Belgium.18 She introduces protagonists, mainly young Nigerian women, who move across boundaries between Africa and Europe (between city centers and suburbs and between touristic sites and less popular spaces) and offers their perceptions and experiences. Their mobility challenges the core/periphery divide and adds epistemic value to the non-standard view.

The Nanonic Institute for European Studies is committed to exploring the usefulness of the lens of “peripheries” as a hermeneutic to understand Europe. This lens will serve as a source of meaningful research contributions of the Nanovic Institute to the field of European studies.

Nanovic Institute-Supported Research: Highlights

Through numerous grants the Nanovic Institute has supported individual and collaborative group research of faculty, visiting scholars, and students in the 2022-23 academic year.

FACULTY RESEARCH

Over the past three years, the Nanovic Institute has awarded more than 150 grants to Notre Dame faculty, with 54 of those faculty grants in 2022-23, supporting meaningful research, scholarship, and creative works. Here are a few examples of these individual and group research projects:

Individual Research Project: Research on Islamic States and European Maritime Law

Led by Emilia Justyna Powell, Professor of Political Science and Concurrent Professor of Law

Powell’s research has led her to the “peripheries” of Europe, from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates, where she interviewed Muslim policymakers, scholarly and religious

18 Cf. Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez and Elisabeth Bekers, “Writing an(Other) Europe: Challenging peripheries in Chika Unigwe’s fiction on Belgium,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 57, no. 3 (May 2021): 386-400; Elisabeth Bekers and Chika Unigwe, “Writing Africa in Belgium, Europe: A Conversation with Chika Unigwe,” Research in African Literatures 46, no. 4 (Winter 2015): 26-34.

authorities, and experts on international maritime law, which has its roots in European legal thought, and its roots are deeply embedded in the Christian faith. Her active research focuses on the reasons and effects of the rich, fruitful record of engagement between the Islamic world and International Maritime Organization. The Nanovic Institute also supported the Powell’s recent book publication, written with Krista E. Wiegand, The Peaceful Resolution of Territorial and Maritime Disputes (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Individual Research Project: “Strangers Within: A Cultural and Genomic History of Red Hair”

Led by Sophie White, Professor of American Studies

Since 2019, the Nanovic Institute has awarded White two grants in support of the research for her third book, Strangers Within: A Cultural and Genomic History of Red Hair, a cross-disciplinary history of redheads, centered on Europe and the European diaspora. This research spans archives and libraries across Europe, including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK. Integrating the genetic and demographic analysis of the redhead gene within a study underpinned by theories of race, discrimination, and gender, it weaves together cultural history, art history, literature, popular culture, mythology, folklore and the history of science. This past year, Sophie White also received an NEH Public Scholars grant to continue her work on this book project. White’s second book (which Nanovic also supported), Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), was honored with eight book awards.

Group Research Project: Transnational France

Led by Sarah Shortall, Assistant Professor of History; Sonja Stojanovic, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies; and Emma Planinc, Assistant Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies

Since 2020, the Nanovic Institute has supported a Transnational France Research Cluster, bringing together Notre Dame faculty and students working across disciplines on France and the

francophone world with a particular interest in the question of what it means to welcome—or reject—the “stranger,” whether these strangers are enemies or friends, and whether they are our “neighbor” or a threat to our way of life. Over the past year, this group has been co-chaired by Nanovic faculty fellows Shortall, Stojanovic, and most recently, Planinc; including the chairs, the group includes 16 scholars working across 10 different departmental units at Notre Dame.

In addition to regular meetings at the Nanovic Institute where ongoing research is discussed and critical feedback is given, this past year the research cluster organized the lectures and classroom visits by scholars Udi Greenberg, associate professor of history at Dartmouth College, and Daniel Nabil Maroun, assistant professor of French at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

In partnership with the Browning Cinema, the cluster organized a French and Francophone film series, funded in part by a competitive grant from the Albertine Cinémathèque Program of the FACE Foundation (supporting French-American Cultural Exchange in Education and the Arts), screening seven films in spring 2023. This film series was selected to be part of the Learning Beyond the Classics initiative that offers a small course open to the public in conjunction with the films, so participants included students, faculty, and about 40 participants from the greater South Bend community.

With aspirations of having Notre Dame recognized as a “Center of Excellence” for the study of France by the French Embassy, the research cluster has plans to increase its visibility online with a dedicated page on the Nanovic website and on campus with two conferences, one in the fall focused on the role of Catholicism in colonial and postcolonial France and one in the spring focused on the French and American Revolutions in comparative/transnational perspective. They will also seek additional external funding.

VISITING SCHOLAR RESEARCH

Over the past three academic years (2020-2023), Nanovic has hosted 21 visiting scholars, with 18 of these scholars from institutions that are part of the Catholic Universities Partnership (CUP), and seven of these from Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). In the 2022-23 academic year, the institute hosted nine visiting scholars, with seven from CUP institutions and three from UCU. While in residence, these scholars pursue meaningful research projects that align with Nanovic research priorities. Here are examples of just a couple of examples of individual and group research:

Individual Research Project: “The Diary of Pelagia Rościszewska”

Led by Dariusz Skórczewski, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Associate Professor of Theory and Anthropology of Literature at John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, and Visiting Scholar at the Nanovic Institute, Summer 2022

Skórczewski’s research, which was sponsored by a grant from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange, centered on a 19th-century diary housed in special collections at the Hesburgh Libraries. Written between 1819 and 1856, the diary belonged to a Polish noblewoman, Pelagia Rościszewska, who was settled in the Kievan Governate.

In an article on his initial findings, published on the Nanovic Institute website, Skórczewski writes, “The diary portrays the history of a 19th-century family of polish landowners in Ukrainian lands that were incorporated into the Russian Empire, setting the family’s experience in the rich social, political, and cultural context of the era.”

At the end of his visiting fellowship, Skórczewski gave a public presentation of his research and findings. Co-sponsored by the Nanovic Institute and the Hesburgh Libraries’ Florence and Richard C. McBrien and Richard C. McBrien, Jr. Endowment, the event took place in the Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Notre Dame.

Group Research Project: Meetings with Psalms and Psalters

Led by Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik, Associate Professor at the John Paull II Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) and Affiliated Scholar (2022-23) of the Nanovic Institute; and Monika Opalińska, Associate Professor of the English Language at Warsaw University

The Meetings with the Psalms and Psalters series fostered an intellectual community dedicated to sharing research on the study of the Psalms through lectures and dedicated discussion. It has been co-convened by Charzyńska-Wójcik and Opalińska and sponsored by the Nanovic Institute, KUL, the Research Group for the Study of Manuscripts, and the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw.

Taking place in nine parts, the series began in January 2023 and will continue through December 2023. It has brought together international scholars from universities and institutes in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and it provides an opportunity to bring rich theological and historical research to bear on Nanovic’s strategic research priority “Faith and Religion in Europe.”

STUDENT RESEARCH

Students are the center of the Nanovic mission. Over the past three years, the Nanovic Institute has awarded more than 200 undergraduate grants and 150 graduate grants, including 88 undergraduate grants and 63 graduate grants in the 2022-23 academic year. Here are just a couple of examples of individual and group research from the past year:

Individual Research Project: The Experiences of the Windrush Generation in the London

Urbanscape

Led by Ida Addo ’24, an Economics Major with a Minor in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service

Addo is one of many students whose individual research projects has been supported by the Nanovic Institute. Over spring break in 2023, she spent one week in London conducting research

for her capstone project titled “London Urbanscape and Policies: Their Effect on the Economic State of the Windrush Generation.”

In focusing on this generation of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to the UK, Addo built upon her interest in examining the welfare of marginalized groups across the world and the characteristics of the barriers they face. This project relates to a number of the Nanovic Institute’s research priorities, particularly its focus on the experiences of those at the “peripheries” of European life and big questions about Europe and humanity, specifically around the histories and legacies of imperialism and migration.

Addo published a substantive discussion of her research project, its motivations and central questions, on the Nanovic Navigator student blog. The piece was also republished in the institute’s 2022-23

Year

in Review

Group Research Project: Ukrainian Art as Protest and Resilience

Led by Student Researchers Emma Ackerley ’23, Clare Barloon ’24, Peter Di Re ’23, Libby Eggemeier ’25, Michael Ellis ’24, Anna Gazewood ’24, Jacqueline McKenna ’23, Bella Mittleman ’24, Erin Tutau ’24, and Felicity Wong ’24, with Graduate Student Advisor Yaryna Pysko MGA ’24

Ukrainian Art as Protest and Resilience was an undergraduate research project, led by the Nanovic Institute and undertaken over the winter break 2022-23. During this project, students researched and analyzed work created by Ukrainian artists, including digital, sacred, and street art; music; fashion; and art by Ukrainian children. As well as nurturing undergraduate research and contributing to the institute’s ongoing attention to the war in Ukraine, this project spoke directly to Nanovic’s strategic emphasis on resilience and resilient communities.

The project led to an in-person and online exhibition that opened on February 22, 2023, during the week of the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The online exhibition is still available to view on the Nanovic Institute website.

Describing the project, Abigail Lewis, director of undergraduate studies at the Nanovic Institute, writes: “This exhibition seeks to highlight Ukrainian protest and resilience during the invasion by Russia and how public art has become a medium of resistance, traumatic mediation, and expressions of identity.”

The success of this project inspired a second undergraduate research project on creative responses to the war in Ukraine, which was undertaken by students from Notre Dame and from UCU during the 2023 summer break. “Writing the War in Ukraine,” which examines Ukrainian war poetry, launched September 2023.

Grants Received

FACULTY RESEARCH SUPPORT PROGRAM – INITIATION GRANT FROM NOTRE DAME RESEARCH

Pilot Research Project on “Peripheries” in Europe

PI: Clemens Sedmak, Professor of Social Ethics at the University of Notre Dame, in Collaboration with Marek Babic, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Letters and Associate Professor of History, Catholic University in Ružomberok (Slovakia)

This project explores the concept of “peripheries” as a tool for the study of marginalized areas and groups within the field of European studies and beyond. This initial stage of the project will focus on the village of Partizánka L’upča in northern Slovakia and will be conducted in collaboration with a local research team coordinated by the Catholic University in Ružomberok. This project serves as one of three active pilot research sites for the study of “peripheries,” with the aim of the larger project to establish a methodological and ethical approach to the study of areas or groups underrepresented or “forgotten” in research and the public perception.

GRANTS FROM THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ SUBCOMMITTEE ON AID TO THE CHURCH IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE FOR TWO NANOVIC PROGRAMS

2023 Summer School for Students of Catholic Universities in Central and Eastern Europe

Now in its second year, the summer school, focused on “Practicing Resilience, Preparing for Recovery,” was created in response to the war in Ukraine, as a collaboration between the Catholic University of Croatia and the Nanovic Institute, primarily to serve the educational needs of students at Ukrainian Catholic University. Taking place in a Catholic primary school in Šibenik, Croatia from June 30 through July 9, 2023, this year’s summer school included 37 students, with 20 from UCU, four from Notre Dame, and the rest from Catholic universities in Central and Eastern Europe. The school focused on practicing resilience, preparing for recovery, drawing from faith practice, and the role of the Church and faith-based individuals and institutions in creating resilient communities.

2023 Catholic Leadership Program

From July 8-15, a group of 16 leaders from the members of the Catholic Universities Partnership attended an executive program for Catholic leaders at the University of Notre Dame, organized and hosted by the Nanovic Institute. Since 2017, the institute has welcomed its colleagues from Central and Eastern Europe to this week-long leadership program, which is designed to provide CUP leaders with opportunities to explore and discuss management skills, strategic planning, and philanthropy development. As the fifth cohort of the leadership program, the 2023 participants attended sessions on topics such as dignity-centered leadership, vision and strategy in university leadership, and advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

NOTRE DAME INTERNATIONAL-UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION GRANTS

The institute also secured and supported three Notre Dame International-Ukrainian Catholic University Collaboration Grants for faculty research projects:

“Religion, Religious Diplomacy, and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”

PIs: Fr. Yury Avvakumov, Associate Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame; and Oleh Turiy, Director of the Institute of Church History, Professor of Theology, and Vice Rector for External Affairs, Ukrainian Catholic University

This project will investigate the role of religious ideas and practices, as well as faith-based diplomacy in the war in Ukraine. This project aims to contribute to a theologically informed understanding of the current situation and its global impact, and potentially envision a fruitful role for religious diplomacy in ending the war with a just peace.

“State Power against the Faith: Mechanisms of Persecution of the Ukrainian GreekCatholic Church in the Soviet Union and the Forms of Its Resistance and Resilience”

PIs: Semion Lyandres, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame; and Oleh Turiy, Director of the Institute of Church History, Professor of Theology, and Vice Rector for External Affairs, Ukrainian Catholic University

Based on recently declassified KGB archives, biographical data, and oral interviews, this project will analyse the repressive policies of the totalitarian Soviet regime against the Greek-Catholic Church. The research aims to determine the functions of the secret police and its agents in various anti-Church measures and to explore the role of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy.

“Strengthening and Understanding Resilient Institutions and Resilient Communities in Ukraine”

PIs: Clemens Sedmak, Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and Professor of Social Ethics, University of Notre Dame; and Nataliya Yakymets, Assistant Director of Academic Questions, International Institute for Ethics and Contemporary Issues, Ukrainian Catholic University

This pilot project will focus on the resilience of two institutions, Ukrainian Catholic University and the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative, and two communities, a foster family and the Emmaus Center for people with disabilities. Through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions, and supported by resilience research, this interdisciplinary project is interested in the congruence between research and experience, and strengthening the resilience of Ukrainian institutions.

Looking Ahead

As our grant-funded projects from 2022-23 demonstrate, the Nanovic Institute is committed to projects that bring value to Ukraine and those that advance collaboration with colleagues from the Catholic Universities Partnership, a network which makes us distinct among peer institutes of European studies in the United States. To sustain and expand this momentum, the Nanovic Institute will work closely with Ukrainian Catholic University to establish a Ukrainian studies hub, deepening our relationship with Ukrainian colleagues and engaging in meaningful research projects useful for the future of Ukraine and developing scholars and students with Ukrainian studies expertise. The new rector of Ukrainian Catholic University, Taras Dobko, is a great ally of the institute and was with the Nanovic Institute as a visiting scholar for the whole calendar year of 2022.

The Nanovic Institute will also intensify its research collaborations with the universities of the Catholic Universities Partnership. We will start a new initiative on the resilience of Catholic universities. Another focus of future activities is the cultivation of research alliances, especially

with the Von Hügel Institute at the University of Cambridge and the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

With three years left in our current strategic plan, we want to make significant progress in the coming years with our core research areas, especially with research on peripheries in a European context, including an enhanced and intentional effort to involve students.

This research report was prepared by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies. It is the first of what is intended to be an annual publication released at the same time as the Year in Review that highlights the research progress and direction of the institute. It would not have been possible without the support the Nanovic Institute’s faculty fellows, students, and staff. The Nanovic Institute is part of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

THE NANOVIC INSTITUTE STAFF

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Directory of Undergraduate Studies

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