Religious Studies Professors Chosen for Together Duke Seed Grants

Congratulations to Associate Professor Richard Jaffe and Assistant Professor Joseph Winters! Their respective projects, "Mindfulness Across the Disciplines," and "Race, Religion, and Volatile Political Movements," were selected by the Office of the Provost for funding through the Intellectual Community Planning Grant initiative. 

Jaffe’s “Mindfulness Across the Disciplines” stems from a group of faculty including Jaffe, a specialist in modern Japanese and global Buddhism; Denise Comer, who utilizes mindfulness practices in her Thompson Writing Program courses; Holly Rogers, a CAPS psychiatrist who has developed mindfulness training specifically for young adults; and Moria Smoski, whose psychology research and practice uses therapeutic mindfulness for emotional regulation. The funding supports this intellectual community that seeks to engage in interdisciplinary interaction that will provide the opportunity to consider the implications of mindfulness theory and practice from many perspectives. The core members will meet regularly, support a multi-disciplinary mindfulness workshop, continue to develop a future interdisciplinary Focus concentration as well as a potential Bass Connections group on mindfulness that will integrate undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students, as well as faculty members.

This grant was cited in the Together Duke Strategic Plan as "a continuing point of emphasis for the university for collaborative interdisciplinary research projects involving both fundamental inquiry and solutions for real-world problems." Through projects like these, the initiative seeks to promote “discovery, debate, curiosity, artistic creation and inspiration.” To learn more of the initiative's mission, click here.