Five Duke Divinity School faculty members received one of 10 Duke University Intellectual Community Planning Grants, which are awarded by the Duke University Office of the Provost. 

A key goal of Together Duke is to invest in faculty as scholars and leaders of the university’s intellectual communities. To foster collaboration around new and emerging areas of interest, Intellectual Community Planning Grants (ICPG) ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 are available to groups of faculty. Recipients can use the funds to support the exploration of new collaborations, covering the cost of meeting venues, food, external speakers or other meeting costs, and research to identify potential collaborators at Duke and elsewhere.

The 2020 grants include faculty from all of Duke’s schools as well as the University of North Carolina, N.C. State University, and North Carolina Central University.

Divinity faculty members include Patrick Smith, associate research professor of theological ethics and bioethics and senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University; Brett McCarty, assistant research professor of theological ethics, associate director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative, and instructor in Population Health Sciences at the Duke School of Medicine; Farr Curlin, Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities; Susan Eastman, associate research professor of New Testament; and Warren Kinghorn, Esther Colliflower Associate Research Professor of Pastoral and Moral Theology, co-director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative, and associate professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center.

The planning grant was awarded for the project “Developing a Neuroethics and Theological Studies Network.” The group will explore what theological studies can contribute to neuroethics and vice versa and examine ways that the engagement of theological studies with neuroethics might best be facilitated. In order to further interdisciplinary collaboration at Duke to shape such dialogue, the group will foster and expand the work of an emerging international cohort of scholars working at the intersection of theological studies and neuroethics.