Rome Fellowship

OVERVIEW

The Paideia Institute Rome Fellowship is awarded annually to outstanding recent graduates in Classics or related fields. Fellows are given the opportunity to live in Rome for a year in order to deepen their knowledge of the city and its culture, learn the Italian language, and gain teaching experience in Paideia’s programs. 

Each fellow receives round-trip airfare to Rome, a homestay with an Italian family (with meals provided), health insurance, and a monthly stipend. Fellows also have the option to participate tuition-free in one of the Institute’s programs, Living Latin in Paris.

Fellows are selected on the basis of academic merit, professional and interpersonal skills, and potential as future teachers and leaders in the humanities.

OUR 2023-2024 ROME FELLOWS

Megan Sharp

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Rome Fellow

Megan Sharp

Megan graduated from University of St Andrews, Scotland in 2023 with a joint honours in International Relations and Latin. Her final dissertation, which combined ancient philosophy with contemporary political theory, proposed an affective methodology for reading the Aeneid through the 'wound.' She is passionate about interdisciplinary thinking and shares a love for philosophy, history, literature, art, and political theory. Her desire to see, travel, and experience the world is matched only by her belief that ideas have the power to change it.

Lehman Schwab

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Rome Fellow

Lehman Schwab

Lehman is currently a 2nd year PhD Student in Classics at the University of Southern California, and has received a BA in Classics from Cornell University. Born in Ithaca, New York, Lehman is one of eight siblings. He is a passionate student of the Classics, and in his free time enjoys playing and watching sports, reading, and outdoor activities.

Isabella Murphy

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Rome Fellow

Isabella Murphy

Originally from Orange County, CA, Belle graduated from Hillsdale College in 2023 with a B.A. in Latin and Classical Education. Though she had studied Latin since the 3rd grade, it was in college that she discovered a love for the language with the help of great professors and great books. Her primary interests are in early Christian literature and the incorporation of active Latin pedagogy into classical education.

Jessica Huber

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Rome Fellow

Jessica Huber

Jessica Huber graduated from Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina with her B.A. in Philosophy and a double minor in Latin and Medieval Studies with a concentration in the Great Books from Belmont Abbey’s Honors Institute. Jessica has taught and tutored Latin and other related fields in many different facets throughout the years, and has spent the past year teaching high school Latin at a college preparatory school in Shelby, NC. Jessica’s academic interests lie in cultivating a living Latin experience in the classroom, as well as studying patristics and ancient and medieval philosophers particularly in the fields of metaphysics and ethics.

Jessica Wood

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Rome Fellow

Jessica Wood

Jessica received her BA in Latin from Hillsdale College, and her MAT in Latin and Classical Humanities from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Some of her favorite Latin texts are Pliny's Letters, Ovid's Heroides and Metamorphoses, and the Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis. Jessica is interested in the depiction of preaching sibyls in the 15th and 16th century, particularly in books of hours. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, trivia, playing board games, and writing.

Nicholas Uram

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Senior Rome Fellow

Nicholas Uram

Nicholas attended Living Latin in Rome with the Paideia Institute
the summer of 2019, and participated in Latin immersion program
Conventiculum Dickinsoniense the year before. He
graduated from Hillsdale College in 2020 where he received a B.A.
in Latin, and has since been teaching Latin at the middle and high
school levels at Highlands Latin School in Louisville, Kentucky.
Nicholas’ primary area of interest in classics include the poetry of
Homer, Vergil, and Ovid, as well as prose and verse composition.

THE FELLOWSHIP YEAR

The fellowship year lasts for ten months, from September 2024 to July 2025. 

During the fall, Fellows receive intensive training in Italian and Latin and take part in guided visits to sites in and around Rome, including multi-day trips to the Bay of Naples and Florence. While in Rome, Fellows work out of the Paideia Institute’s Rome office.

For the remainder of the year, Fellows work primarily as teaching assistants for Paideia’s Classical Tours program. One of the Fellows’ main responsibilities is designing, planning, and leading educational trips involving high school and college students in Rome, the Bay of Naples, and Florence. Fellows are also involved in teaching in Paideia’s high school summer program in Rome, Living Latin in Rome High School.

ELIGIBILITY

Applicants to the Rome Fellowship must be recent graduates from a college or university with a strong background in Classics or a related field. Preference will be given to alumni of one of the Paideia Institute’s programs, but non-alumni are also encouraged to apply.

While there is no ideal applicant, we seek Fellows who value teaching and who have exhibited throughout their undergraduate career an aptitude for language-learning and the potential to make a strong contribution to the field of classical humanities. Given the nature of the Fellowship year, we are interested in applicants who have demonstrated comfort with independent research, the ability to thrive in a collaborative environment, and a sense of adventure and adaptability. 

The fellowship year is physically demanding and requires Fellows to participate in extended visits to museums and archaeological sites. Interested applicants should be prepared to spend long periods of time on their feet, occasionally under challenging weather conditions, and should have the ability to walk long distances in a single day.

APPLICATIONS

The required application materials include:

• Paideia Rome Fellowship application form
• Personal statement (500 words maximum)
• Academic writing sample (25 page maximum)
• Two letters of recommendation (1 academic recommendation, 1 personal or professional recommendation)
• Official academic transcript
• Resume

The personal statement should summarize the applicant's academic and personal interests, discuss how the applicant's skills are suited to a dynamic role of teaching and working with students, and explain how the Fellowship year fits into the applicant’s broader career goals. 

The academic writing sample should be on a classical topic (interpreted broadly to include history, literature, art history, and classical reception) and should exhibit depth of research, creativity, and clarity of writing. 

The academic recommendation should be from a professor who has worked closely with the applicant and can speak to his or her academic merit. 

The personal or professional recommendation should be from a colleague or supervisor who can speak to the applicant’s organizational, administrative, and interpersonal skills as exhibited in the context of an internship, job, or campus organization.

DEADLINES AND APPLICATION PROCESS

The deadline for all application materials, including letters of recommendation, is March 1, 2024. 

Please click on the button below to access the online application form and submit your materials. All references and transcripts should be sent to [email protected].

Applicants selected as finalists will be invited to participate in the interview process in late March. 

Final offers will be made in April. 

FURTHER INFORMATION

If you have any questions, please contact the Paideia Institute’s New York office:

The Paideia Institute
PO Box 670
New York, NY 10012
(609) 429-0734 
[email protected]