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UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
INSTITUTE AWARDS WEGS PRIZE Mary Kate Kriscovich '20 Finance and French Minor in European Studies Mary Kate Kriscovich ’20 was awarded the 2020 J. Robert Wegs Prize for Best Minor in European Studies Capstone Essay for “Social Enterprise Institutions in France.”
A 15 to 20-page scholarly research paper, the capstone essay is the final requirement of the Minor in European Studies and is written by students over the course of a semester on a European topic with the guidance of Notre Dame faculty advisors.
“The Wegs Prize serves to honor and remember the founding director of the Institute, Professor Wegs, who was committed to enriching undergraduate education and to excellence in scholarship,” says Clemens Sedmak, interim director of the Nanovic Institute. “Mary Kate Kriscovich’s essay particularly deserves this year’s Wegs Prize because her work demonstrated sustained research, included travel to Europe to deepen her questions and understanding, and presented her conclusions in admirable prose. It is a pleasure to award her this prize on behalf of the Nanovic Institute.”
In her prize-winning essay, Kriscovich explores how social enterprises—businesses whose primary concern is to serve the public good—are understood in France and how they add value to society. She also demonstrates that individuals strongly motivated by a sense of altruism or a desire to positively influence society are increasingly likely to choose to work in the social enterprise industry.
“My analysis takes an in-depth look at social enterprise institutions and considers what are some personal motivations among persons who go into this field,” says Kriscovich. “I wanted to find out why the government structure in France was more favorable to social businesses, as well as to understand the motivations of their owners. As I am very interested in going into social business, it was useful for me to have many perspectives.”
On her research trip to France last spring, Kriscovich met several social business owners. She was struck by how each entrepreneur spoke about their own motivations for engaging in this type of work—even if it meant less financial and professional security. With guidance from Sonja Stojanovic, assistant professor of French and Nanovic faculty fellow, Kriscovich shaped those conversations from her first trip into a narrow research topic—one that could link to concepts from her coursework at Notre Dame and position her to ask more targeted, specific questions when she would return to France later in the year.
“Mary’s capstone is the result of an ambitious and innovative project evolving from research on the ground,” says Stojanovic. “Mary is an exemplary and diligent student, and it was a rewarding experience for me to work with her on this project.”
In addition to working in Chicago post-graduation for West Monroe Partners, a management and technology consulting firm, Kriscovich hopes to learn more about social enterprises in France in order to conduct further in-depth analysis and a comparison between the social entrepreneurial cultures of France and America.
The Wegs Prize was established in 2012 to honor the late J. Robert Wegs, founding director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame. The development of the Minor in European Studies is but one of Professor Wegs’s many contributions to the Nanovic Institute.
RELIGION, MIGRATION, AND COMMUNAL MEMORY IN GREECE Elsa Barron '21 Biology and Peace Studies with a minor in Sustainability For the first time in more than 200 years, the faithful gather at a public mosque in Athens, Greece.
A major gateway for westward migrants along the Mediterranean coast, Athens has seen unprecedented waves of migration in recent years, including the arrival of more than 800,000 predominately Muslim refugees since 2015.
Drawing on communal memories of the Ottoman Empire and its colonizing forces, many Greeks, who comprise the 95% Greek Orthodox majority, view present-day migrants through the same lens. This shared history is held up as a reason why the growing Muslim community in Athens is not more widely received by prevailing religious and government officials, despite their increased numbers and, in turn, opportunities for interreligious dialogue.
“The interaction between the Christian west and the Islamic east plays out in Athens in a unique way,” says Elsa Barron, junior biology and peace studies major at the University of Notre Dame and two-time grant recipient from the Nanovic Institute. “There’s a huge opportunity to study Islam in Europe as part of an expanding research frontier.”
Barron’s research on the political and religious dynamics surrounding the construction of the first official mosque in Athens was sparked while analyzing interviews with refugees to assess religion’s role on migrant assimilation and integration into Europe. Nanovic Institute Faculty Fellow Rev. Robert Dowd, C.S.C., served as faculty mentor for Barron’s research projects, including her transcription analysis.
“Elsa’s research reveals a great deal of variation in the extent to which the Greek community promotes empathy with migrants, and we are currently grappling with plausible explanations for this variation,” says Dowd. Barron says, “For a large European city, Athens is an anomaly. My research attempts to uncover why this city doesn’t have an official mosque, despite having one of the largest populations of Muslim refugees in Europe.”
During Barron’s first winter researching migration and religion in Athens, funded by a Nanovic Institute student grant, she investigated how Muslim migrants and native Greeks view the construction of the mosque. Her findings suggest that for Muslim migrants the presence of a physical mosque in Athens is a welcoming sign, if not one of government support, and gives them a place to anchor their life in a new country. On the other side of the study, the largely conservative Greek population, of whom 65% hold unfavorable views of Muslims, proved wary of the increase of Muslims in Athens and unlikely to support the mosque’s construction.
Barron’s research seeks to bring clarity to an otherwise unsettled dialogue. Using a series of semi-structured interviews, she engaged with migrants, those who work with migrants, NGOs like the Muslim Association of Greece, religious organizations, and contacts gathered from Golden Dawn to better understand the diverse perspectives on Islam in Athens and the possible implications of this new mosque.
“The inherent political power that the Islamic community would receive through state recognition—being able to send a delegate to talk with representatives, and the dignity of having a space— unfortunately doesn’t come without reservation from the Greek community,” says Barron.
Drawing inspiration from her coursework back at Notre Dame, Barron expanded her research on the mosque in Athens to encompass its implications on peacebuilding in Greece and returned to Athens on a second Nanovic grant. She examined how the construction of the public mosque could help resolve political problems faced by Athens’s Muslim community, quell fears of concerned Greek citizens,
Elsa Barron '21 speaks with the founder of the Muslim Association of Greece, Naim el-Ghandour (far left).
and potentially foster interfaith peacebuilding through dialogue, integration, and education.
“A public mosque provides a dignified place of worship for Muslims, support to the religious minority and most vulnerable in Greek society, and augments the safety of Greek residents, Muslims and non-Muslims alike,” says Barron. “From religious services in the local language to opportunities for the Greek education system to become more comprehensive and inclusive, the relationship between the Greek government and an Islamic institution in the city builds the foundation for many possible integration programs, which is an essential step for peacebuilding in any community.”
Barron recalls a singular moment in her fieldwork when she witnessed a crowd of Muslims pouring into one of the more than one hundred unofficial underground mosques in the city on an unmarked, residential street. Just before, Barron expressed her intent to find an underground prayer space to a local shopkeeper, to which the shopkeeper responded: “Good luck finding one of those.”
The need is evident. Although it is estimated that the public mosque can accommodate just 300 men and 50 women at a time, and even with concerns voiced by members of the Greek Orthodox and Muslim communities over certain concessions, Elsa Barron sees the opening of the mosque as a critical step forward. Barriers may still exist, but Barron suggests that, with the right leadership, a mosque in Athens might pave the way for fruitful religious dialogue in a city that has long been monoreligious, affording Greek leaders and citizens alike the means to understand Islam in a modern context, and the chance to turn painful historic memories into peaceful partnerships for the future.
DISCOVERING CHESTERTON IN LONDON Brady Stiller '20 Theology and Biology For Notre Dame class of 2020 valedictorian Brady Stiller, his fall break travel and research grant from the Nanovic Institute built on relationships he had fortuitously established with archival trustees and stakeholders at the London Global Gateway.
Stiller’s senior theology thesis, “Vocation as Story— A vocational reading of G.K. Chesterton,” sought to investigate the ways the work of the famed writer illuminates questions about free will and the human condition today. While Stiller had already completed an impressive amount of preliminary research during his study abroad in London in the fall of 2018, he knew there was more to Chesterton’s story for him to uncover. While Stiller was able to glean insight into Chesterton’s idea of “vocation as story” from his published works, he knew that archival collections would deepen his analysis. “Visiting archival collections of original notebooks, newspaper clippings, and artworks filled in the gaps of my understanding of Chesterton,” said Stiller. “And his unpublished life also offered a window into the mind and daily life of Chesterton, whose vocational worldview I could see in action in his personal notebooks and original works of art.”
When he was first in London, Stiller was able to meet Aidan Mackey, one of the foremost Chesterton experts and the man who independently organized the archive now held at the Global Gateway. He credits this connection and his relationships with professors and other Chesterton enthusiasts at the Global Gateway with allowing him to access the archive in Trafalgar Square before it was open to the public. After completing his weeklong research, Stiller was more than pleased with the results of his time in London. Working with manuscripts, he learned how surprising discoveries appear in unexpected places. “Some surprises . . . useful for my thesis are what I found in studying his notebooks and toy theater,” said Stiller. “His notebooks are a window into his imaginative mind, which was always thinking up a line for a poem, a scene of a play, a prayer of gratitude to God, or an image to doodle.”
Fr. Jim Lies, C.S.C., faculty member and director of Catholic initiatives and outreach at the London Global Gateway, says “Brady’s curiosity, faith, intellect, and interest in research delighted the London faculty.
“Our efforts at the London Global Gateway to pursue the Chesterton Collection were much rewarded when we learned that Stiller, the first person to explore the wonders of our newly acquired archive—even before it had been shelved—was selected as the 2020 valedictorian,” says Fr. Lies. “The Nanovic Institute’s creative and generous ways of supporting our students’ travel and research is widely known; we see the fruit of it in all kinds of ways in London. Brady’s research visit was among them and only possible because of the Institute’s generosity. We’re all so proud of his good work.”
Stiller, who graduated in May, is considering going to seminary in his home state of Louisiana. But he added that, no matter what he does, his work with Chesterton isn’t done—thanks to his Nanovicsupported research: “To have done this type of archival research with these particular collections so early in my academic career gives me hope that I might one day continue researching Chesterton.”
