Research Fellowship

AY 2025-2026 Theme: Providence and Prayer

The Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame is offering up to 5 residential fellowships during the 2025 – 2026 academic year for projects on the theme of “Providence and Prayer”. Fellows will pursue independent research while interacting with leading scholars in philosophy and theology during a year in residence at Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion.

This fellowship program is open to both recent Ph.D.'s and established scholars. The Center typically funds scholars in philosophy and theology; but we have occasionally funded researchers in other humanities disciplines. Our weekly works-in-progress group is primarily attended by our visiting fellows and local faculty and graduate students in philosophy, and our priority will be to fund projects on the 2025 – 2026 research theme that can be productively engaged in that context.

Successful applicants who have recently received their Ph.D. will be appointed as postdoctoral fellows, funded at $80,000 plus benefits. Established scholars will need to request leave from their home institutions in order to accept the fellowship; we ask that you verify that the amount of funding required by your home institution for such an arrangement is less than or equal to $80,000 before applying.

For the 2025 – 2026 academic year we are especially interested in projects that investigate divine providence in response to prayer or other religious acts, including worship and the sacraments. In petitionary prayer many people seem to ask God for special intercessions or miracles. Many also thank God for creating and sustaining the world in general, and some acknowledge a God who does not intercede typically or currently (except, perhaps, in providing “wisdom”). We are interested in questions about the kind of divine agency that is presupposed in various modes of prayer and how to reconcile a view of God as possibly interceding in ordinary human affairs with the recognition that God often does not “answer” prayer. Research proposals that relate to providence and prayer only indirectly – including proposals exploring divine providence and human free will – will also be considered, though we will prioritize proposals that more directly engage the focal theme or closely adjacent questions, including:

• How God acts upon individuals or within communities in the context of the sacraments
• The indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a mode of divine action or providence
• How God acts providentially through the Church or the “body of Christ”
• The relationship between prayer and spiritual transformation or the cultivation of virtue
• Prayer as it is understood in various mystical traditions

The deadline for initial applications is December 31, 2024. Selected applicants will be invited to submit a full application by February 15, 2025. Fellowships begin in August 2025 and conclude in May 2026.