Since 2014, the Cushwa Center has worked with Notre Dame Rome to host seminars, conferences, lectures, and fellowships in the Eternal City. The center’s Rome Advisory Committee, inaugurated in 2017 and chaired by Luca Codignola, recently welcomed six new members:
Flavia Canestrini, D.L., M.A. (Pisa), Ph.D. (Sciences Po, Paris), is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Fiesole, Italy, and adjunct professor of global history at Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli (LUISS) in Rome. A past visiting fellow at Northwestern University, Canestrini is an economic historian whose research examines the intersections of late 20th-century globalization, U.S. foreign policy, and international economic relations. Her forthcoming book examines how expanding markets in the 1980s transformed economic sanctions into key instruments of power and influence in global affairs.
Susanna De Stradis, B.A., M.A. (Pisa), Lic. (Scuola Normale Superiore), Ph.D. (Notre Dame), is assistant professor in 20th-century U.S. religious history at Mississippi State University. She has been a fellow with the Social Science Research Council and a postdoctoral fellow at the John C. Danforth Center. Her research focuses on 20th-century U.S. Catholics’ institutional and cultural relationship with Rome and Rome’s impact on American religion and politics. Her work has appeared in scholarly and public-facing outlets, including Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, Religion Compass, Religion and American Culture, The Immanent Frame, and Commonweal.
Jane Eade, B.A. (Hons), M.A., Ph.D., is the director of heritage collections for the Venerable English College, Rome. Formerly a cultural heritage curator for the U.K. conservation charity The National Trust, she has worked as a curator for the National Portrait Gallery (London) and the Courtauld Gallery (London) as well as for university and private collections. She has broad research interests in early modern religious history and visual culture, particularly portraiture. Her Ph.D. explored the relationship between sight and the concept of insight in the figurative arts of the European Baroque. Her publications include “The Representation of Faith and Religion,” in K. Anderson, J. Field, and C. Murray, eds., Reframing King James VI & I, special issue of British Art Studies (December 2025); “Between the Sacred and the Profane: Framing Early English Portraiture,” in C. Strunck, ed., Glaube, Politik und die Künste. Frühneuzeitliche Transfers zwischen katholischen und protestantischen Kulturen. Eine Einleitung (2019); with D. Taylor, “The Family of Sir Thomas More Revisited,” in D. Adshead, ed., in association with Apollo magazine, The National Trust Historic Houses & Collections Annual (2015); “Power and Sacred Art,” in N. Llewellyn and M. Snodin, assisted by J. Norman, eds., Baroque 1620–1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence (2009).
Maria Susanna Garroni has taught North American history at the Università di Napoli L’Orientale and Università Roma Tre. Her research and writing focus on Italian immigration to the United States as well as gender history and political history, particularly with regard to U.S. pacifist feminist women and their international connections. The editor of a pioneering book on Italian women religious and U.S. immigration, Sorelle d’oltreoceano. Religiose italiane ed emigrazione negli Stati Uniti, una storia da scoprire (2008), she recently published “Spaghetti with Meatballs is not Italian. L’Italianamericanism delle italiane emigrate negli Stati Uniti nel Novecento,” in S. Luconi and M. Verdicchio, eds., Lontane da casa. Donne italiane e diaspora globale dall’inizio del Novecento (2015); “Lo sfilacciarsi della rete: pacifiste femministe fra Europa e Stati Uniti,” in S. Bartoloni, ed., La Grande Guerra delle Italiane. Mobilitazioni, diritti e trasformazioni (2016); “Interpreting Little Italies: Ethnicity as an Accident of Geography,” in W.J. Connell and S.G. Pugliese, eds., The Routledge History of Italian Americans (2018).
Raffaella Perin, D.L. (Padua), Ph.D. (Padua), Ph.D. (Pisa-Paris), is associate professor of the history of Christianity at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. She studies the history of the papacy in the 20th century, particularly the Holy See’s relations with Jews and Protestants, media’s role in Vatican politics and diplomacy, and Catholic anti-modernism. She serves on the editorial boards of Annali di scienze religiose, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, and Modernism; as an advisory editor of the Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu; and as a member of the scientific committees for the Opera Omnia of Carlo Maria Martini and for the Institute for the History of Catholic Action and the Catholic Movement in Italy Paul VI.
Pierantonio Piatti, D.L. (Firenze), Ph.D. (Roma Tor Vergata), diploma in archives sciences (Vatican School of Palaeography, Diplomatics and Archives Administration), diploma in library science (School of Library Science of the Vatican Apostolic Library), is secretary of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. His main research fields are hagiography, the history of religious orders, and the history of women religious. He serves as director of the series “Atti e Documenti del Pontificio Comitato di Scienze Storiche” published by LEV-Libreria Editrice Vaticana; historical consultant for the Vatican Dicastery of the Causes of Saints; secretary of the Commission Internationale d’Histoire et d’Études du Christianisme; member of the Centro Internazionale di Studi Cateriniani (Rome); and member of the Deputation for National History of Tuscany (Florence).
The Rome Advisory Committee’s 20 members share expertise, participate in events, and lead partnerships with European universities and institutes. Full member bios are available at cushwa.nd.edu/rome.
This update appears in the fall 2025 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.