Meet Our Fellows

The 2024-2025 Global Irish Studies Initiative Fellowship cohort consists of 8 Undergraduates, 1 Master’s candidate, and 1 PhD candidate. Learn about their independent research projects below.

GIS supports undergraduate and graduate Fellows (all Georgetown students) in developing independent research projects (both critical and creative) that explore Irish Studies in a comparative or global context, focusing on Irish history, politics, literature, public health, business, and more. Our aim is to support student academic work on Ireland in whatever form it takes and in whatever discipline or school it takes place.

Learn more about previous cohorts of GIS Fellows and their research projects here.

The competition for 2024-25 Fellows is now closed, but students interested in becoming a Global Irish Studies Fellow for the 2025-26 year should check the application page in Fall of 2025.

If you are a friend of Global Irish Studies and you wish to support our Fellows program, contact Prof. Cóilín Parsons for more information, or go to our Make a Gift page.

2024-25 Fellows

Ainsley Atwood

Undergraduate, SFS ’26

Ainsley Atwood is a junior in the School of Foreign Service majoring in Culture and Politics and minoring in English and French.  Her research through the Global Irish Studies fellowship will focus on the role of Greek antiquity in contemporary Irish literature, investigating the modern implications of reference to ancient times.

Madison Dwyer

Undergraduate, SFS ’25

Madison Dwyer is a senior in the School of Foreign Service majoring in International Politics and minoring in Jewish Civilization and French. Madison’s work with Global Irish Studies supports her undergraduate thesis, which focuses on a history of diplomatic engagements between Ireland and Israel, from 1949 to 2024. Madison’s previous fellowship with GIS centered on the influence of the Catholic Church on Irish primary and secondary education.

Jiahao Guo

Undergraduate, SFS ’26

Jiahao Guo is a junior in the SFS studying Global Business. His project aims to examine how Ireland has historically and presently influenced Welsh independence movements and the possibility for an independent Wales.

Carly Liao

Undergraduate, SFS ’27

Carly Liao is a sophomore in the School of Foreign Service studying Regional and Comparative Studies with a minor in Chinese. She is originally from Palo Alto, California. Her research is focused on the historical and contemporary interactions between Ireland and the Indigenous peoples of North America, with a particular emphasis on their shared experiences of colonization, survival, and resistance.

Susannah Masson

Undergraduate, CAS ’27

Susannah Masson is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in English and Government. Her research hones in on the long-lived relationship between nationalist movements and language revivals. She is interested in exploring how republicans in Northern Ireland sought to establish a distinct cultural identity through promoting the revitalization of Irish Gaelic.

Picture of a smiling person wearing a green graduation robe with a yellow cord

Jack Pruett

PhD Candidate, Linguistics ’26

Jack is a PhD Candidate in Theoretical Linguistics at Georgetown University. His dissertation partially focuses on a unique form of word building in the Irish language. He studies the “consonant mutations” which are used to indicate various grammatical functions in the language, and how these “mutations” are pronounced and where they occur. His research ties into a larger discussion in the literature about word building processes in natural human language.

Andrew Swank

Undergraduate, SFS ’26

Andrew Swank is a junior in the School of Foreign Service majoring in Regional and Comparative Studies, with a minor in Statistics. His research will examine public memorials to the conflict in Northern Ireland to analyze public remembrance of the conflict. The project will provide insight about the memorialization of the conflict, and compare the case with other post-conflict societies.

Alex Tyler

Undergraduate, CAS ’26

Alex Tyler is a junior in the College studying History. His project aims to compare arms importation in scale and status from both Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries during the Troubles. He hopes to focus on the role of the United States and in particular the city of Boston in facilitating the transfer of guns. 

Kaitlyn Vana

MS Candidate, McCourt School ’26

Kaitlyn Vana is a first-year MS in Data Science for Public Policy student at the McCourt School for Public Policy originally from North Texas. As a GIS fellow, she will focus on Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s shared history of suffering during highly sectarian, ethno-religious conflicts and whether the framing around gender-based violence during The Troubles needs to be re-examined, specifically using the comparative lens of the established use of strategic GBV in the Yugoslav Wars.

Picture of a smiling person in a black blazer and white turtleneck with a stone background

Khushi Vora

Undergraduate, CAS ’25

Khushi is a senior in the College studying Economics and English. Her research will focus on the emergence of the postcolonial middle class in Ireland and India in Dubliners by James Joyce and Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan, both published during the rise of their respective independence movements.