Bridging Faith and Science: Collaborative Research on Suffering, Virtue, and Aesthetics

This roundtable will feature the work of six theologians who have engaged in a three-year long Templeton-funded Cross-Training grant with psychological scientists. Each theologian chosen to participate is committed to the flourishing of minority groups in their local context. The theologians were specifically trained in three critical areas: (1) education in and engagement with psychological literature, (2) mentor-training in labs, and (3) interdisciplinary collaboration with psychological scientists. Together with their psychological mentors, each theologian on this roundtable has proposed and carried out a theologically informed empirical project related to one of three areas: suffering, virtue development, or aesthetics. For these theologians, team-based projects were a new way to conduct and engage in interdisciplinary research. We believe this cross-training pedagogy provides a model for how theologians can collaborate both within and outside their field as interdisciplinarity becomes more integral to humanities researchers.