Meet this week’s new Campus Profile, Dominique D’Onofrio! This well-traveled camel is super involved on campus both academically and through extra curricular activities! Read on to learn more about Dominique, her cool internship last spring, and her study abroad experience!
Class Year: 2018
Hometown: Bainbridge Island, WA (just outside of Seattle)
Majors: Italian Studies and Classical Languages
Certificates: CISLA and Museum Studies
Which extra curricular activities are you involved with on campus?
SafetyNet, Cakes4Care, I work at the Language and Culture Center, and I’m also a tutor for Italian and Latin.
How was your abroad experience? Where did you go and did you like it? Anything else you want to share about it?
I studied in Bologna, Italy through the Eastern College Consortium (ECCO) program. I took grammar classes in my program and other classes on history and museum studies at the local university (Università di Bologna). It was amazing. I lived with Italian students in an apartment building about a 10 minute walk from the city center. We had cooking classes and took program trips to Florence and Venice. Everything was in Italian – so if you’re looking for an immersive study abroad experience in Italian, I highly recommend Bologna.
Did you have an internship this past summer? Where? What did it entail? Did you enjoy it?
This past Spring I worked in Rome for 12 weeks with the Direzione Generale Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio (Directorate General Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape Heritage or DGABAP) – the archeology department of the Ministry for Culture, a part of the Italian government. There, I researched illegal archeological excavations, ran meetings, wrote reports, and attended museum gallery openings. I collaborated with the regional offices of the DGABAP, with INTERPOL, and with the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale– Italy’s military police force that deals with cultural heritage theft.
The internship was phenomenal. In fact, it may have been the best part of my experience in college. I learned so much about this topic (which I am writing my thesis on) and want to work in this field after college. I think my CISLA internship really solidified my desire to keep studying the illegal antiquities trade and my desire to have a career preventing it.
Are you writing a thesis? What’s it about?
My thesis is about the illicit antiquities trade in the Italian peninsula. I am starting with a history of art and antiquities theft in Italy from the Roman Republic until the present day, then writing a section on the legislation written on the prevention of art theft that applies or has applied to Italy, concluding with what the Italian government is doing now to protect art and antiquities in the future. The information for this final part comes primarily from my work during my internship in Rome.
Favorite movie? book? song? TV show?
Book: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
TV Show: Numb3rs
I can’t choose a favorite song or movie, too hard.
What’s your favorite thing to do in your free time?
Reading old classic novels (I just finished Dr. Jekyl & Mr. Hyde and Gulliver’s Travels)
Learning languages – I recently started learning Scottish, Gaelic, and Irish
Lastly, although it’s early, have you started to think about plans after Conn?
I just applied to graduate school in Scotland at the University of Glasgow to study transnational crime.