Italo Alves, a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, is the sole philosophy student among the 2024 class of Newcombe Fellows.

The Newcombe Fellowships, a program of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation (and co-founded by the late Robert M. Adams), are awarded to late stage PhD students in the humanities and social sciences who are working on “religious commitments and ethical ideas… and [seek] to understand the communities, social practices, and political arrangements that embody them.”

Mr. Alves’ dissertation is entitled, The Social Aesthetics of Recognition and is about “how the aesthetic sphere, particularly in everyday practices of self-presentation and style, is fundamental to articulating moral claims.”

He was named the Robert M. Adams-Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow in Philosophy. The fellowship is in the form of $31,000 over 12 months. Twenty-two fellowships were awarded.

Given the focus of the fellowship program, it is somewhat surprising that only one philosopher was among the twenty-two fellows, though this isn’t the first time this has happened.