This five-year project led by a team at Oxford University will stimulate world-class research and outreach in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The project will enhance engagement with Big Questions in science and religion within the region and in dialogue with researchers elsewhere in the world. Over two hundred diverse subgrants and major activities of the project, covering the twenty-four countries of CEE, will focus principally, though not exclusively, on a suite of questions within the broad themes of (a) Science and Religion in the CEE Context; (b) Reason and Faith; and (c) Persons, Mind, and Cosmos.
An initial project carried out by the IRC has emphasized that CEE is an area of high religious vitality and distinctive approaches to research in science and religion. The region is also home to historic scholarly institutions whose capacity for world-class academic work is now resurging after damage suffered in the communist period. As a result, the situation is timely for a substantial project with a portfolio of activities across the region to catalyze and shape innovative research, teaching, and outreach. The proposed project will meet this need, offering many opportunities, especially to early-career and entrepreneurial academics working at various intersections of science, theology and philosophy.
The many activities of the project will include three study weeks, a congress and a conference, an exchange program for Master's students, three essay competitions, fifteen visiting fellowships, thirty-five project subgrants, ten translations of key works into leading regional languages, and forty project videos. The project is also expected to stimulate the preparation of over ninety-five academic publications. These activities will help to foster a new generation of scholars and co-operative networks to transform future research in the region.
