Transform Graduate Students Anna Vincenzi, Ph.D. Department of History Nanovic Graduate Fellow
Throughout her career as a graduate student, Anna Vincenzi’s research and experience at Notre Dame was enriched by the Nanovic Institute. Vincenzi, who was conferred with her Ph.D. in history this May, specializes in the “Age of Revolution” (1765-1848), a time marked by citizen upheaval in Europe, not dissimilar to the current sociopolitical climate. In the spring of 2016, during her second year of doctoral study with the Department of History, Vincenzi was awarded a graduate professional development grant to attend the British and Irish Associations for American Studies annual conference at the Queen’s University in Belfast to present, “The American Revolutions of Venice, Florence, and Rome: Views from the Italian Gazettes, 17651791.” Vincenzi was awarded two more graduate professional development grants the following year to give presentations: one at the Consortium of the Revolutionary Era at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, the other at the Age of Revolutions Conference hosted by Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway. In 2018, she received a fourth grant to participate in the Global Dome Ph.D. Accelerator Program in the United Kingdom, organized by Nanovic faculty fellows Patrick Griffin and Elliot Visconsi in collaboration with faculty from the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Heidelberg. “As I approached the defense of my dissertation proposal, and as I attempted to define the scope of
my research and the questions that my dissertation would answer, opportunities to network and learn from other scholars through dialogue were extremely fruitful,” says Vincenzi. With financial support from a Nanovic Institute summer travel and research grant, Vincenzi spent two weeks conducting research in Florence, Modena, and Milan during June 2018. In Florence, she carried out research at the State Archive, where she focused on sources pertaining to the Tuscan Grand Duke Peter Leopold’s reforms and most specifically his constitutional project. Vincenzi also visited the National Library, the Marucelliana Library, and the Oblate Library, where she accessed and made digital reproductions of a great number of Tuscan and nonTuscan periodicals. “This grant allowed me to make essential progress toward the completion of two of my dissertation chapters—a chapter focusing on Florentine reactions to the American Revolution, and a chapter looking at how interpretations of the American Revolution evolved and changed during the 1790s and after the French Revolution broke out,” says Vincenzi. The digital journal reproductions served as the basis for the last of her dissertation chapters. With plans to submit a book proposal to a publisher in the near future, Vincenzi believes her Nanovic-funded professional development grants have poised her to find success as she begins applications for academic jobs.
“I want to thank the Nanovic Institute for supporting my research and allowing me to make essential progress toward the completion of my dissertation.” 36
Year in Review 2019-20
