This project is indebted to the labor of dedicated graduate students and research assistants. Here, you will find their biographies and headshots.
Rachel Lentz is a 2nd year PhD student in the Political Science department at the University of Notre Dame. Her work seeks to bridge the history of political thought, specifically 17th and 18th-century thinkers, with contemporary issues in political philosophy. She has experience in archival research, and received a grant to explore the development of Mary Wollstonecraft's theory of education in her letters housed at the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University and is incorporating this into an article on Wollstonecraft's philosophical engagement with Adam Smith in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Rachel has published on the role of impartiality in Adam Smith's thought, and for her dissertation is exploring how the sentimentalist tradition might shed light on topics concerning intergenerational justice and climate change ethics.
Elayne Allen is a second year PhD student in political science at the University of Notre Dame concentrating in political theory and constitutional studies. She is interested in Catholic responses to modern political theory. Her dissertation will examine how John Henry Newman offers a distinct approach to understanding the Church’s relationship to the modern world, neither fully embracing nor fully rejecting it. Elayne is also interested in the literary dimensions of Mary Wollstonecraft’s works, and the ongoing relevance of her thought in contemporary debates about women’s rights.