Rome International Scholar interns at the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Rome

Monica Caponigro is a junior at the University of Notre Dame studying film, television and theater, and peace studies. Originally from South Bend, she is currently in Rome with the Rome International Scholars (RIS) program.

As part of the RIS program, during the semester she takes part in an internship at the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Rome, a German organization with 50 different locations worldwide. The Rome office where she interns works towards strengthening the Bavaria-Italy-Germany triangle and promoting dialogue at various levels, from parliamentary exchange to civil society.

The Hanns Seidel foundation’s office is located in Via delle Coppelle, a few stones away from the Pantheon.

In order to choose the best internship for her career, Caponigro worked with the internship coordinator Jim Schwarten, and they were able to find a position that brought together her interests in media and storytelling as well as peace studying and peace building. Caponigro is the first intern from Notre Dame at the Hanns Seidel foundation and she gets to play many roles within the organization, not only using her knowledge and experience in social media building, but also learning of conference building and different kinds of peace building through educational resources, conferences, and learning how different nations work together in a multitude of ways to create peace.

The Hanns Seidel Foundation has been represented in the political center of Rome since 2022. The Foundation works to enrich the German-Italian dialogue in the European context with a Bavarian perspective. The Christian social values are the basis of the foundation’s work focusing on Italian and Vatican politics.

In her job, Caponigro collaborates with an intern from Germany as well as with the Roman team. Both the office and her job are culturally and linguistically enriching.

“The multiculturalism within the organization has been both a challenge and a blessing,” comments Caponigro. “In the office, I am the only person who doesn’t speak German. I have a little more Italian than the other interns in some regards, but it has definitely been a challenge to figure out exactly what is going on all the time. But in that regard it has also been a blessing to understand how these different nations work together from being in Italy and talking about German and specifically Bavarian politics, and how other politics and other nations interact with Italy. It has been an experience to understand how so many different states come together to work towards change."

Watch the video interview for more details.

Learn more about internship opportunities in Rome