Exploring Our Common Humanity in Diverse Contexts
What we seek to accomplish
About Exploring Our Common Humanity in Diverse Contexts (ECoH)
In 2020, Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF) ran its Grand Challenges for Human Flourishing Request for Ideas (RFI), which resulted in over 500 submissions from 350 institutions worldwide of ideas that can push the frontiers of our knowledge and understanding of human flourishing. Exploring our Common Humanity in Diverse Contexts (ECoH) is the amalgamation of several submissions that converged on the need to expand our understanding of human flourishing in diverse populations.
Recognizing that the current science of human flourishing is not fully representative of the breadth and diversity of human experience, the foundation is exploring the feasibility of establishing Collaborative Research Hubs in one or more of the following regions worldwide: Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, and East Asia.
TWCF’s ultimate aim is to support and enhance the capacity of scholars in these regions to produce discovery-oriented scientific research that speaks to what it means to be human, the distinctive intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual capacities that humans possess, and how humans can flourish. TWCF’s vision of flourishing goes beyond attainment of survival-related outcomes and material goods. We are especially interested in research that examines fundamental questions of how humans flourish in diverse contexts, including contexts of social and economic adversity.
We envision Hubs to be researcher-led networks that provide different research and capacity-building opportunities, including efforts to:
- Coordinate, lead, and undertake scientific research on topics that are central to our understanding of how humans can flourish
- Enable researchers to participate in interdisciplinary training to support their research efforts
- Foster connections between researchers across diverse contexts to support the integration of knowledge on universal and contextual aspects of flourishing
- Encourage dialogue across sectors to promote connections between research, policy, and practice (including leaders in education, culture and the arts, and religion) with an eye towards practice-informed research and research-informed practice
We expect Hubs to be led and coordinated by individuals who are currently undertaking high-quality, impactful research in disciplines or areas relevant to human flourishing, such as neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, philosophy, theology, and integrative research areas such as developmental science and cognitive science. These individuals and their institutions should be well-networked regionally and interested in pursuing interdisciplinary research. Once these individuals, institutions, and partners have been identified, we anticipate awarding grant funding to establish research agendas and capacity-building programs that will advance fundamental research on what it means to be human and how humans can flourish.
The foundation sought applications for landscaping studies to map the relevant research, leadership, training, and partnership landscapes for the study of human flourishing in one or more of the following regions: Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, and East Asia. The Request for Proposals is closed, as of end of day, April 14, 2023.
We seek to map the relevant research, leadership, training, and partnership landscape for the study of human flourishing in one or more of the following regions: Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-East Asia, and East Asia. Building on this work, the foundation will aim to establish Collaborative Research Hubs for the scientific study of human flourishing.
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