Berkley Center

The Religious Freedom Research Project (RFRP) offered summer Ph.D. dissertation fellowships for students exploring the sources, development, and impact of religious freedom in history and the present day. The RFRP supported research on the relationship between religious liberty and the global common good; the importance of religious freedom for democracy, social and economic development, or countering violent religious extremism; the religious freedom of groups and institutions; and/or the relationship between institutional religious freedom and the common good of Western and non-Western societies in history and today. Successful proposals rooted the study of religious freedom in particular academic disciplines in order to generate new knowledge about the importance of religious liberty (or its absence) to the global common good; the promotion of economic development, political freedom, and a robust and dynamic civil society; and/or the elimination, prevention, moderation, or mitigation of religiously-driven extremism and violence. Fellows represented schools such as Baylor University, Georgetown University, the Catholic University of America, Harvard University, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, University of Virginia, and Yale University.