In this topical area, we seek to advance our understanding of how individuals and communities discover and cultivate meaning in their lives.  

We are especially interested in projects that investigate concrete manifestations of meaning making in a world marked by rapid social change, with attention to the practices, experiences, and transitions that enable people to develop, sustain, or renew a life of meaning. Projects should focus on a specific dimension of human life—including but not limited to parenting, vocation, or play—or examine specific tensions inherent to meaning making in contemporary society, such as agency and constraint, mystery and meaninglessness, or suffering and joy.  

Competitive proposals will demonstrate the potential to intervene constructively in the tensions characterizing modern life or clarify the conditions in specific spheres of life that support meaning making and beneficial outcomes. Ultimately, we seek research projects that will help individuals and communities cultivate better ways of being—how interpretive frameworks, existential commitments, and communities form people into more resilient, fulfilled, and spiritually or socially attuned human beings.  

While we are open to projects of various structures and designs, for this topical area we particularly encourage projects that:   

• Integrate the sciences with philosophy, theology, or religious studies through robust interdisciplinary collaboration, as reflected in the project’s personnel, activities, outputs, and framing.  

• Produce findings relevant to pluralistic societies and individuals who may or may not claim religious affiliations.  

• Apply a novel approach to a well-defined setting or tension to ensure conceptual and contextual clarity.  

In this topical area, we will consider only the following: (1) projects between $700K and $1.5M (projects over $1M should use a Requests For Proposals (RFP) structure to support competitively selected subgrants around a shared theme); and (2) focused studies requesting less than $260K investigating a specific dimension of meaning-making. To apply to this topical area, please select “Religion, Science, and Society – Meaning Making” in the OFI portal. 

In this topical area, we seek to strengthen the capacity of communities and societies to envision and navigate the future.  

We are especially interested in how religious, philosophical, and narrative traditions—from theology to science fiction—inform a shared sense of imagination and possibility. We welcome projects that use empirical and interpretive methods to examine the evolutionary, cognitive, and cultural processes shaping the human capacity to think about and prepare for the future. Research in this area should illuminate how communities structure time through institutions, cultural practices, and creative resources to yield distinct forms of knowledge and foresight.    

Competitive proposals should employ methods capable of generating predictive insights, imaginative scenarios, and future-oriented knowledge. Approaches may range from computational and predictive models to theoretical and interpretive inquiries. The goal is to shed light on how communities, institutions, or societies adapt, evolve, and transform by orienting present action toward imagined possibilities.  

While we are open to projects of various designs, for this topical area we particularly encourage projects that:  

• Draw on expertise from the humanities and media studies alongside the social sciences, theology, or philosophy, as reflected in the project team and partners. 

• Apply statistical approaches, demographic projections, agent-based simulations, and mathematical models to enhance our understanding of future mental states, religious and spiritual practices, social behaviors, and cultural innovation. 

• Integrate generative juxtapositions—such as empirical methods and narrative analysis, wisdom traditions and contemporary media, or philosophical inquiry and popular culture.  

• Demonstrate clear potential to inform how institutions, communities, or societies prepare for and respond to change. 

In this topical area, we will prioritize exploratory projects with a request amount of up to $260K and clear, achievable outputs. To apply to this topical area, please select “Religion, Science, and Society – Imagined Futures” in the OFI portal.