Grace Loonan ‘28

Grace Loonan is a sophomore from Saint Paul, Minnesota, majoring in International Economics and Global Affairs. She is working with Professor Zoltán Búzás to examine Sino-American great power politics. Specifically, Loonan analyzes American news articles to investigate how the United States uses human rights issues to delegitimize China. She plans to continue exploring China's interactions with other countries through her fellowship at the Notre Dame International Security Center. Loonan is also a EURO Fellow with the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, where she will participate in a research immersion trip to Ireland this fall break. In Summer 2025, Loonan spent eight weeks in Croatia through the Nanovic Institute's Serving (in) Europe program. There, she analyzed tensions created by the adaptive reuse of monuments as part of the Nanovic Institute's Sites of Memory project. Loonan's research paper, "Does Society Need Saving? Applying the Christ Figure Archetype to Agnieszka Holland’s 'Mr. Jones' and Maren Ade’s 'Toni Erdmann'" can be found in Volume 25 of the University of Notre Dame's "Fresh Writing" publication.