Santiago Amaya (Universidad de los Andes) and Manuel Vargas (University of California, San Diego) have won a $1.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for their project, “Free Will, Agency, and Responsibility.”

The project “aims to cultivate work on these topics, especially in Latin America.”

Professors Amaya and Vargas write, on the project site:

We believe there is untapped potential for high-level philosophical work on these topics within Latin America, and many avenues for creating sustainable dialogues on these issues across the Americas. Our aim is to cultivate that potential, forging a community of philosophers positioned to pursue original, creative, and collaborative work on these topics. The project seeks to provide early career researchers with opportunities to produce and sustain high-level research on free will, agency, and responsibility. It will also build an Americas-wide dialogue among philosophers pushing discussions on these topics in new directions, including collaborations across the Americas.

In an email, Professor Vargas notes that this is the largest award the Templeton Foundation has made to a university in Latin America.

The funding will support seminars, workshops, conferences, post-doctoral positions, and award competitions. You can learn more about it here.

Monika Bravo, “Duration”