Who We Are

Hi! I am Marko Jakovljevic, and I am a rising sophomore pursuing a double major in Political Science and Economics with a minor in Philosophy. I am passionate about political theory, ethics, and American politics. Apart from academics, I am a rower on the club team, an associate editor of a literary magazine on campus, and love to explore coffee-shops in my free time.

It is no secret that the experience of elections in American politics has become a high-stakes and even existential process. As the 2024 elections approach, the ethics of voting and abstaining will become a more pressing conversation. Arguments about why, how, and whether people should vote are as unavoidable in household conversations as in scholarly debate. This summer with the Kenan Summer Fellowship, in my project “The Challenges of Ethical Voting,” I am researching the ethics of voting and whether voting is necessary to live an ethical life. In this project I will be confronted with a wide range of perspectives and questions about the debated importance of voting, the idea of ethical and civic duties, and fundamentally what it means to live in a political order.

My name is Margot Madison, and I am a rising sophomore from Newton, MA, studying Economics and Global Health. In my spare time I enjoy running, cooking, and long walks with podcasts. This summer, with Julia Simon and Elly Ronald, I will be investigating the secularization and commercialization of pilgrimage while on El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. We are specifically hoping to investigate the economic, environmental, and social impacts of pilgrims on towns along the route.

Hi, my name is Elly Ronald and I am a rising sophomore from Mill Valley, California. I plan to study environmental science and visual media studies. In my free time I love to do anything outside, including surfing, rock climbing, and backpacking. I have always been intrigued by how we can more ethically navigate the outdoor world while enjoying it for recreation or other reasons. This summer as my group and I walk one of the routes of El Camino de Santiago, a month-long catholic pilgrimage across Spain, we are investigating ethical cultural tourism as well as the economic, environmental, and social effects of the recent secularization of the pilgrimage on the local towns and people.

I am a rising sophomore from Sonoma County, California. In my free time I love spending time exploring the outdoors, running, and going to concerts! I am planning on majoring in both Neuroscience and Philosophy — a path of study that I hope will guide me to a better understanding of individual people and humanity as a whole. This is my primary intellectual interest, and also what I will explore as a Kenan fellow. This summer I will be looking into the secularization of El Camino de Santiago, an ancient Catholic pilgrimage, primarily through a person-centered lens. I hope to gain an understanding of how shifting demographics and modernization impact both the lives of locals and the experiences of pilgrims, and how these effects can be applied broadly.

My name is Divya Srijay, and I am a rising sophomore from Spartanburg, South Carolina interested in majoring in physics and neuroscience. I spend most of my time working on protein design in the programmable biology lab in the BME department, and in my free time, I enjoy playing the cello, reading, and spending time outside!

My project this summer focuses on accessibility to equitable greenspaces. Considering the increasing urgency of preserving natural environments and the prevailing effects of redlining, after learning about the importance of nature in my writing class, Biophilic Cities, understanding how to equitably implement greenspaces entered the forefront of my interests. With the Kenan Summer Fellowship, I plan to discover who isresponsible for attending to this equity- if anyone at all. To do so, I will be interning at Columbia Green, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to greenspaces in underserved parts of Columbia, SC, and visiting Singapore, a flagship biophilic city to learn about their approach to the ethics of biophilic design.