2025 Summer Research Internships
Madelyn Fisher, Practicum Internship in Museum Studies
Madelyn is a rising senior undergraduate student from Sterling, Massachusetts, at Connecticut College. She is a Classics major with a concentration in Classical Studies, currently working towards her Honors Thesis on late Roman Republican portraiture styles. In conjunction with her major, Madelyn is also a student in the Museum Studies Certificate Program. Her program explores the roles of museums in shaping society’s knowledge about art, culture, history, and the natural world while exposing different career paths in all types of museums. Through her studies, she has discovered an interest in Museum Education. She is most interested in the visitor-museum relationship and expanding educational accessibility to all visitors.
As a Museum Education intern at the Icon Museum and Study Center, Madelyn plans to create a new self-guided audio tour of the Museum, featuring various selected artworks from the galleries.
Cathy Keough, The John Barns Research Internship
Cathy is a PhD Candidate in the English Department at the University of Connecticut and a student in the UConn Graduate Certificate Program for Literary Translation. She holds a BA in Russian Language and Literature from Smith College and a BA in Scandinavian Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests include 19th-century studies, environmental humanities, museum studies, and comparative literature.
As the John Barns Research Intern at the Icon Museum and Study Center, Cathy is studying fire imagery in iconographic depictions of the Mother of God, particularly within 17th-19th century Old Believer communities in Vetka (present-day Belarus), and is translating materials on the iconographic development of the “Fiery Mother of God” icon in Vetka.
As a Museum Education intern at the Icon Museum and Study Center, Madelyn plans to create a new self-guided audio tour of the Museum, featuring various selected artworks from the galleries.
Josie Lindesay, High School Practicum Internship
Josie is a junior attending St. Bernard’s High School in Fitchburg, MA. As part of her school’s Junior Internship Program, she spent two weeks on various projects at the Museum. Her projects included writing alt text for the Museum’s website and helping shape an art activity designed for student groups.
Abigail Matthews, Practicum Internship in Public History
Abigail is a rising sophomore at Endicott College, pursuing a degree in Public History. The program equips students with the tools and methodologies needed to engage broad audiences with historical narratives through museums, archives, and cultural institutions. With a focus on curatorial studies, Abigail is interested in how historical artifacts and exhibitions can educate and inspire the public.
As a Public History intern at the Icon Museum and Study Center, Abigail plans to create a gallery brochure for the permanent collection.
Eirini Remboulis, The Catherine Mannick Research Internship
Eirini is a junior at the Savannah College of Art and Design, majoring in Art History with double minors in Museum Studies and Language and Cultural Studies. Born and raised in Athens, Greece, she developed a deep connection to Orthodox art, which continues to shape her academic focus on Byzantine and contemporary Byzantine art, as well as her practice in hagiography. Through her research and future museum work, she hopes to advocate for a more inclusive and dynamic understanding of Byzantine art’s legacy in the present day.
As the Catherine Mannick Research Intern, Eirini plans to use the Museum’s extensive study collections and the current exhibition on George Kordis as a foundation for her undergraduate thesis. Her research will explore the enduring legacy and evolving role of Byzantine art, with a focus on its contemporary revival and relevance in today’s artistic and cultural landscapes
As a Public History intern at the Icon Museum and Study Center, Abigail plans to create a gallery brochure for the permanent collection.
2024 Summer Research Internships
Caleb Barrett, Practicum Internship in Public Humanities
Caleb is a rising sophomore Public History Major at Endicott College from Sterling, MA. His Public History degree program primarily focuses on the analysis of both academic research and history itself to make information more accessible to the public, particularly through exhibits and archival work. He is most interested in the aspect of public history that prioritizes interpretation of artifacts and primary source documentation to create original exhibits for the public.
As a Public Humanities intern at The Icon Museum and Study Center, Caleb is transcribing the notebooks and lectures of Shirley Kontos, a late twentieth-century Greek icon painter from Chicago.
Kyriaki Giannouli, The John Barns Research Internship
Kyriaki is a doctoral candidate in Byzantine History at the University of Ioannina and a professional painting conservator. Her research, supervised by Dr. Christos Stavrakos, Full Professor of Byzantine History at the University of Ioannina and Secretary General of the AIEB, examines the significance of Greek landscapes in the travelogues of Western pilgrims to the Holy Land between the 12th and 17th centuries. She is a specialist in Byzantine icons, frescoes, coins, and seals with experience in producing conservation reports and in managing databases. During her three-month remote graduate fellowship at the Index of Medieval Art (January-April 2024) at Princeton University, she collaborated with Dr. Maria Alessia Rossi, Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art, and Julia Gearhart, Director of Visual Resources in the Department of Art and Archaeology. She undertook tasks such as examining legacy records, studying bibliographies and artifact conditions (including enamel, metalwork, wood, sculpture, and mosaic), updating metadata, and identifying and incorporating new color images into online databases.
As the John Barns Research intern at The Icon Museum and Study Center Kyriaki is focused on expanding knowledge around the collection of Greek icons, including panels from 16th- and 17th-century Veneto-Cretan workshops.
Michael O’Connell, The Raoul and Mary Smith Research Internship
Michael earned a B.A. at Haverford College in 2024 with a double major in Russian and History. At Haverford Michael participated in the campus biking club and in student government. Michael’s summer project at The Icon Museum and Study Center as the Raoul and Mary Smith Research intern builds on his recently completed thesis, which followed the generational arc of Russian Orthodox immigrants in Philadelphia in the 20th century. He is interested in how the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches responded to issues of ethnic and national identity, especially among emigrants who left villages in the Carpathian Mountains and along the Dniester River. The national and religious identity of this region and its people is politically and historically contentious; he thus hopes to use icons and other religious items brought and/or made by immigrants to examine the historical questions they raise in the United States.
His research interests include immigration, immigrant societies and organizations, the Russian émigré community and press, and ethnicity in the United States including various historiographic dimensions. He hopes to continue his education in graduate school with plans to teach Russian as a foreign language to adults and professionals.