About LATAM Bridges in The Epistemology of Religion

Our LATAM Bridges project consists in a series of activities that will create bridges between Latin American and North American philosophers working in the epistemology of religion. We will (a) organize Summer seminars in three Latin American countries, (b) competitively select scholars for mentoring and research fellowships, (c) establish prizes in order to incentivize scholarly activity, and (d) host a capstone conference at the University of Houston.

All in all, our project will have exposed and trained a group of roughly 30-45 young Latin American scholars with the tools to carry on serious work in the epistemology of religion in their own universities. We will also have provided an opportunity for further exposure and training in the epistemology of religion to 16 scholars who will return to key roles in Latin American academia; these scholars will have completed around 28 individual research projects, 24 of these with the help of North American faculty mentors. Through the seminars and fellowships, moreover, this core group of Latin American philosophers will have developed important academic relationships with the North American philosophical community, and will be ready for further partnerships and collaborations.

By achieving these goals, we hope to increase the number of philosophers in Latin America working in the epistemology of religion, the number of classes taught in it, and the number of majors and grad students introduced to it in the following years. Importantly, our project is religiously neutral. It welcomes work in a variety of religious traditions and will include the study of reasons for theism, atheism, and agnosticism. Scholars of every persuasion are encouraged to participate. This project was made possible through the support of a $1.3 Million grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

CONTACT:
labridge@central.uh.edu