We are delighted to announce that Tatiana Barkovskiy has been awarded the 2024 Oxford University Prize for Eastern European Perspectives on Science, Theology and Humane Philosophy, for her paper '"Thus the soul wills nothing, since it is free”: Marguerite Porete on free will'.
Second-place prizes were awarded to Valentino Findrik for his paper 'Soft Oikophobia', Jan Gałat for his paper 'The Theology of Technology: Technology’s Role in Human Salvation' and Martyna Iwanicka for her paper 'The Temporal Intentionality of Mystical and Psychotic Unions: A Phenomenological Perspective.'
Submissions for the Oxford University Prize for Eastern European Perspectives on Science, Theology and Humane Philosophy were invited from students and early career researchers at institutions in eligible Central and Eastern European countries.* The first prize was $2000; prizes of $500 were awarded to each of the runners-up.
Suggested topics at the interface of science, theology, and humane philosophy included:
- Differences between scientific and non-scientific modes of enquiry;
- The relations of brains, minds and human persons;
- The role of religion in the historical development of science;
- The place of values in the natural world;
- Free will and scientific determinism and/or divine foreknowledge;
- Empirical psychology and the second person perspective;
- Philosophical/theological understandings of totalitarianism;
- Phenomenological approaches to religion;
- Science-engaged theology and theologically-engaged science;
- Understanding notions of God, good and evil in a scientific age.
*Eligible countries were: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, former East Germany, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.
This prize is part of the John Templeton Foundation project, Science, Theology and Humane Philosophy: Central and Eastern European Perspectives organised by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford.
