Francisco Guell, a researcher within the Mind-Brain Group of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra, has received a grant from the Oxford Templeton Latin America Visiting Fellowships to fund a four-month research stay at the People's Autonomous University the State of Puebla (UPAEP) in Mexico. This grant, consisting of $15,000, is one of the four 2016 grants that the Templeton Foundation has awarded so far.

On the invitation of Professor Hector Velazquez, Dr. Guell will remain in Mexico between February and June 2016. During his stay, he will interact with students and teachers through different courses, seminars and symposia at the UPAEP. He will also contribute to various publications and work on a joint research project between researchers at the UPAEP and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City.

The Oxford Templeton Latin America Visiting Fellowships, coordinated by the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, is awarded to encourage Latin American universities to invite scholars from other regions to visit their institutions and jointly conduct research on the interactions between science, theology and philosophy.

Academic collaboration

Besides Guell, three researchers have been recognized as Oxford Templeton Visiting Fellows. Karl W. Giberson, from Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts (USA), was vice president of the BioLogos Foundation and, in 2013, gave the II Annual Mariano Artigas Memorial Lecture, which is organized by CRYF at the University of Navarra. Giberson will conduct his research at the Catholic University of São Paulo and the Catholic University of Parana in Brazil. Dirk Evers holds the chair of Systematic Theology at the Martin Luther University of Halle Wittenberg (Germany) and is the current president of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT). Evers will visit the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia. Finally, William E. Carroll, a Blackfrais Research Fellow and professor within the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, will visit the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

This scholarship is intended to encourage engagement between students and researchers from Latin American universities and scholars from other parts of the world. After the conclusion of the research stays, the program also hopes to foment long-term academic collaboration between the centers.