Lucia Costigan, professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award to Mexico.

Costigan will be researching “The Transformation of Portuguese New Christians into Heretics during the Union of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns: 1580-1640” at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Biblioteca Franciscana and Biblioteca Palafoxiana during January – June 2021.

“The Fulbright award will allow me to expand my research on self and collective ethnic and religious identity among those who migrated from the from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World in search of a better life or to avoid religious discrimination in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” Costigan said. “Among those who came to the New World for religious reasons, we find particularly the subjects of Jewish ancestry who lived in Portugal and Spain in the late medieval and early modern times, but who became targets of Inquisition during the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns.”

Costigan said her goals during her time in Mexico include conducting research toward a book that explores the historical dynamics and religious persecution in the past, and its reverberation in the present, and to enhance collaboration between academic institutions and scholars from Mexico and the United States.

For more information about the Fulbright Scholar Program, visit fulbright.osu.edu or contact Joanna Kukielka-Blaser.