Italian Studies

Erica Moretti's research at Brown focused on the work of the Italian educator Maria Montessori, also the object of her dissertation, written under the direction of Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg. Her first book, based on her dissertation,The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education and Children’s Rights, was published in 2020 and received the 2021 American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize in the category of First Book, as we as the ISCHE First Book Award, granted by the International Standing Conference for the History of Education. In 2023-24, Erica was the Millicent Mercer Johnsen/National Endowment for the Humanities Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, where she pursued research about her next project, Across the Colonial Sea: Family Reunification, Vatican Humanitarianism, and the End of Empire (1943–1950) for which she was also the recipient of a awarded a Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship in 2022-23.