It’s with a heavy heart that, after nearly three years, I will be concluding my role as the Program Coordinator of the Borromini Institute to instead pursue a PhD in Art History and Visual Culture at Duke University.
When I first arrived at the Borromini Institute in 2022, I had just finished my Master’s in Art History at John Cabot University and was facing a wave of self-doubt as to whether I would be able to find a meaningful way as an early career professional in Rome to apply my intimate knowledge of the city and skillset as an art historian.
To my great joy, that opportunity soon arrived in the form of a Program Assistant position with the Borromini Institute. In this role, soon promoted to Program Coordinator, I have had the great pleasure of developing academic programs abroad for American universities in collaboration with home-university faculty across a range of disciplines. I have led in-class and on-site guest lectures with several universities on topics ranging from political graffiti and street art to the impacts of Italian Fascist urban planning, in addition to having now mentored over thirty University of Illinois students as their internship supervisor.
Cultivating these mentoring and teaching relationships with students across disciplines and backgrounds has confirmed my career inclination for teaching and determination to one day return to Rome as a professor myself. Now is also a crucial moment to remember and reflect on the value of an international education. I have become the person I am today because of my own experiences studying abroad as both an undergraduate and Master’s student, and now thanks to the many lessons I’ve learned working alongside my Borromini Institute colleagues to develop and coordinate similarly meaningful learning abroad experiences for our students.
I leave the Borromini Institute with so much gratitude for the many students, faculty, staff, and collaborators I’ve met along the way, and with a lot of excitement about where this next path will take me.
