Maria-Katrina Cortez

María-Katrina graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University in 2019. She then received a Master of Studies from the University of Oxford (Balliol College) where she was awarded the Oxford-Sir Colin Lucas Graduate Scholarship in 2020. She also obtained another master’s degree (M1 and M2) in political behavior from Sciences Po (Paris) in 2022. She worked in the education sector of UNESCO and has been a qualitative researcher in the past five years. Her master’s theses at Oxford University and Sciences Po both investigated the young French Right.

She is an essayist and political commentator for The European Conservative and City Journal and an honors fellow of the Center for European Renewal.

Her academic interests include European conservatism and monarchism, right-wing populism, territorial cleavages, classical liberalism, Catholicism, German intellectual history, the intersection of religion and identity politics, youth politics, right-wing ecology, political psychology, and classical education.

Her thesis is supervised by Emiliano Grossman and Juliette Galonnier.

Research

Her thesis project compares the trajectories and autobiographies of French Catholics (since birth, reverts, converts), secular right-wing identitarian militants, and those who hail from both spaces. It analyzes a host of reasons for shifts to the Right and the resurgence of Catholicism as a political force in France. She uses multi-sited ethnography, as well as longitudinal interviews with around a hundred people.

Two broad questions undergird this project. First, what role does religion play in support for the Right in different areas across France, from the most religious to the least? Second, to what extent does the rise of Right-wing populism and identitarian nationalism lead to an increased interest in (Traditionalist) Catholicism? It will look at the bi-directionality of the relationship between voting behaviour and Catholicism. Other supporting questions include: does the culturalization of religion by some right-wing parties attract young voters? And in turn, against the backdrop of identity politics, does youth socialization in these parties result in an increased or newfound religiosity? Qualitative research helps understand the array of meanings behind religion and political identity, may it be in terms of civilization and culture; beliefs and values; institution and Church; and salvation and sacredness. Through qualitative methods, this project will assess the drivers that have changed and continue to change the relationship between politics and religion in the French right and equally examine the various iterations of French nationalist identity and Christianity.

Teaching

Fall 2024 - Religion, Politics, Society - Teaching Assistant of Juliette Galonnier (CERI) - Sciences Po Paris - 24h

Spring 2024 - Qualitative Methods and Writing in the Social Sciences Level 2 - Teaching Assistant of Nadège Ragaru (CERI) - Sciences Po, Ecole des Affaires Publiques (EAP) & Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) - 16h

Spring 2024 - Race and Equality in the United States - Examiner of Daniel Sabbagh and David Steiner (CERI) 

Publications

“Aya Nakumara and the Death of Music”, The European Conservative, May 4, 2024

“Backfiring in Brussels”, City Journal, April 26, 2024

“Much Heat, Little Light”, City Journal, March 29, 2024

“A Marriage of the Rousseauian and Wollstonecraftian Mind”, The European Conservative, March 8, 2024

“Silent Night, Holy Night in Bethlehem”, The European Conservative, January 20, 2024

“Geert Wilders and the Sociology of the Populist Right”, The European Conservative,  December 26, 2023

“Who are Populist Voters?”, City Journal, December 04, 2023

Awards

Oxford-Sir Colin R. Lucas Graduate Scholarship

Academic Programmes

Pascal Instituut - Genealogy of Beauty in Music (Trumau, Austria; July 2024)
Music and philosophy; awarded scholarship by the University of Texas

AAI The Machine Has No Tradition (Harvard, Cambridge, MA; June 2024)
Technology and politics through the lens of Schmitt, Heidegger, and Schumpeter

Academia Tocqueville (Paris, France; 2023)
French Intellectual History with Chantal Delsol, FX Bellamy, and Rémi Brague

Center for European Renewal Honors (Utrecht, Netherlands 2023)
Political philosophy and year-long mentorship with leading right-wing intellectuals