The Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ECG) awards six to eight residential Faculty Fellowships annually to researchers whose work addresses the Institute’s yearly Research Theme.
During the 2025-26 academic year, ECG is sponsoring research projects that investigate The Future of Virtue Ethics: Strengthening Foundations and Exploring Applications.
Call for 2025-26 Fellows
The 21st century poses a host of novel ethical challenges arising from tremendous technological, social, and environmental changes, requiring us to develop, strengthen, and apply our core ethical frameworks.
One such framework is virtue ethics, which emphasizes the importance of virtue and practical wisdom in leading a moral life.
In the ancient world, figures like Plato and Aristotle (in the West) and Confucius and Mencius (in the East) developed virtue ethics. It further traces roots in the wisdom tradition of Judaism. It became a powerful influence for Catholic thought through the work of Augustine and Aquinas, and it continues to be a significant ethical tradition today, with genuinely global reach.
The Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good aims to catalyze and develop new work in virtue ethics with a series of 6-8 residential faculty research fellowships during the 2025-26 academic year.
These fellowships will bring together ethicists from across many disciplines—including philosophers, theologians, humanities scholars, social scientists, policy analysts, and legal scholars—to discern future directions of virtue ethics.
Note that while the term “virtue ethics” has come to have a specific meaning in philosophy and theology, it should be understood broadly here to include topics such as integral human development; holistic human flourishing; character development; and the political, social and institutional structures that best foster such development. Researchers working on these topics from any disciplinary perspective are welcome to apply.
In 2025-26, one Faculty Fellowship will be co-sponsored by the History of Philosophy Forum at Notre Dame, in connection with the Forum's Historical Traditions of Ethics Research Cluster beginning in 2025. This fellowship will fund a project that investigates a topic in the history of ethics.
Research Topics
Potential research proposal topics on The Future of Virtue Ethics may address, but are not limited to:
- Theoretical Analyses: What is virtue ethics? How is it best understood as an ethical theory? What is virtue, and what are the virtues? What is practical knowledge or wisdom? How can it be cultivated? How do particular virtues like love, humility, or generosity fit with contemporary ethical theory? How should we characterize the common good? How do we develop political and social theory rooted in core assumptions about human flourishing?
- Practical Applications: How can virtue ethics inform our understanding of real-world problems, such as emerging technology, migration, environmental issues, and economic and political inequality? How should we approach Just War Theory in the 21st century? How do virtue ethical frameworks inform our thinking about ethical and governance issues in business?
- Critical Evaluations: Is virtue ethics a plausible ethical framework? What are its main objections and can they be answered? Can it hold its own against competing theories, such as consequentialism, deontology, and natural law theory?
- Historical Studies: How was virtue ethics understood by Plato, Aristotle, Mencius, Confucius, and/or other historical figures? How has the view shifted over time? How should an analysis of the history of virtue ethics inform contemporary approaches to ethics?
- Theological Connections: How is virtue ethics present in and informed by religious texts and theological traditions? How do we apply these traditions in increasingly pluralistic and global contexts?
- Psychological and Sociological Connections: How have ideas about virtue and character development manifested themselves in culture and society? How does recent research in social psychology impact our assumptions about whether individuals have stable character traits and what is the current state of the art for empirical challenges to the virtue ethical framework?
- Technological Questions: Can machines develop virtues and/or practical wisdom? Does virtue ethics provide insight into the responsible development of AI?
ECG is also interested in supporting artistic works—fiction writing, visual arts, musical composition, etc.—that address or challenge our understanding of the importance of virtue in a moral life.
The above list is a mere sampling of projects that fit with the theme: ECG welcomes any research project that fits with the topic of virtue ethics, broadly understood, whether or not it is explicitly specified above. ECG also welcomes projects that fit the theme in creative or surprising ways.
Further Information
Application Procedures
Please refer to the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study website for application procedures.
Eligibility Requirements
Please refer to the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study website for eligibility requirements.
Evaluation Criteria
Please refer to the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study website for evaluation criteria.