Scholarship Awardees
Seven students have been named as Ricci candidates for the 2024-2025 academic year. These students will spend their fall semester in Rome, Italy at the John Felice Rome Center, and will spend their spring semester doing research from an East Asian perspective. The new Ricci Scholars are: Grace Bludau, Amara Grajewski, Josephine Jurasas, Abigail Roytburd, Kathleen Sheffert, Madeline Tattan, and Isabella Vickers.
Grace Bludau, from Houston, Texas, is a member of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, majoring in Psychology with a double-minor in Political Science and Chinese Language and Culture. Her research, in Rome and Hong Kong, explores how social media affects young women's body image and how governments’ policies affect usage and user experience. She hopes to discover how cultural differences shape social media usage and understand how these platforms can be changed to improve global mental health.
Amara Grajewski, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a double-major in Global Studies and Philosophy with a double-minor in Race and Ethnicity and Religious Studies. Their project seeks to understand how Catholic women in Italy and Buddhist/Shinto women in Japan interpret feminine religious imagery, including how personal interpretations adhere to or divert from official religious doctrine. This cross-cultural ethnographic research is supported at LUC by the Building International Bridges scholarship, the Johnson Scholarship (through the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership), and the Provost Fellowship, and, externally, by the Freeman-Asia Award for Study in Asia, and the Gilman International Scholarship. Amara hopes to take the experiences gained through their experiences in the Ricci Scholars Program to pursue a postgraduate education in Anthropology.
Josephine Jurasas, from Downers Grove, Illinois, is an Art history Major. Her project examines the art and architecture of religious spaces in Italy and Japan, specifically how the theological and liturgical practices of Catholicism and Buddhism impact architecture. Her research involves close study of and a participatory focus on religious practices in churches in Rome and Buddhist temples in Japan. She hopes to gain knowledge about the art and architecture of religious communities, which will hopefully encourage and inspire her future academic pursuits.
Abigail Roytburd, from the suburbs of Detroit, is a Psychology major with a minor in Criminology. Abigail’s project examines how having a child with autism affects parents in Italy and South Korea. Her research focuses on how cultural differences, stigma, and parental gender shape the experiences of caregiving and contribute to parental stress. Passionate about understanding and improving family dynamics, Abigail aspires to use her findings to advocate for more inclusive and supportive policies that empower parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities across diverse cultural contexts.
Kathleen Sheffert, from Park Ridge, Illinois, is a Philosophy major with a double-minor in Economics and Japanese Language and Culture. Her project focuses on pro-natalist narratives emerging as a response to declining fertility rates in Italy and Japan, with a particular emphasis on the economic, governmental, and organizational responses to demographic decline. She aims to pinpoint and compare the core narratives of pro-natalism in both countries. After completing her undergraduate education, Kathleen hopes to attend law school, where she plans to pursue a focus in international law and apply her cross-cultural insight.
Madeline Tattan, from north of Boston, Massachusetts, is an Art History major with a double-minor minor in English and Asian Studies. Her research examines 19th-century depictions of women in prints and paintings, with a focus on how different cultural values and historical events affect the depictions of women in Italy and Japan. She is interested in art as archival, in terms of how societies preserve and view history through art. She hopes to learn more about how women were depicted in the 1800s and to explore the cross-cultural relationship between Europe and Japan at such an important historical period.
Isabella Vickers, from Denver, Colorado, is a member of the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, majoring in Global Studies with a triple-minor in Spanish, Anthropology, and Peace/Justice/Conflict Studies. Her research centers on sustainability and sovereignty in food systems under the framework of urban food planning. Specifically, she is looking at the implementation of Climate Smart Agriculture and Community Supported Agriculture practices and policies as they relate to the quantity and quality of agricultural yield in Rome, Italy, and Hirakata, Japan. Through socio-cultural and socio-ecological perspectives, her project will examine the intersection of food, identity, policy, and the environment in the context of global climate change and food insecurity and injustice.
