Dr. Katherine L. Jansen, Research Ordinary Professor in the Department of History, is among the 198 individuals from 53 different disciplines awarded Guggenheim Fellowships for 2025, which is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the program.
Guggenheim Fellowships are among the most competitive and prestigious of all awards granted to academics in arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences (there were nearly 3,500 applicants for this cycle). These Fellowships are awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The mission of the program is to offer “support to exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions.”
The Fellowship will support Dr. Jansen’s work on her current monograph project. She comments: “The Relics of Rome aims to write the history of premodern Rome through its most precious Christian treasures – its relics – of which the Veronica was its most pre-eminent. The book aims to be an aid to understanding how relics and holy objects shed light on Roman Christianity. Modeled loosely on Richard Krautheimer’s important study of Roman churches, this book plans to profile the city of Rome by focusing on its most important treasures: the relics of the saints.
“On a personal level, I am thrilled to be named a Guggenheim fellow so that I can start getting my hands dirty in the libraries and archives of Rome for my new book. But on a professional level, I am also incredibly grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for their continued support of the work of artists and scholars, when that support is becoming increasingly endangered.”
Dr. Laura Mayhall, the Department’s Chair, adds: “This prestigious award recognizes Kate Jansen’s significant contributions to the scholarship of medieval Italy. The recipient of numerous other such awards, including ones from the Fulbright Commission, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (among others), she continues to research and write on topics central to the mission of The Catholic University of America. The faculty of the Department of History applaud her!”