The Mind and Life Contemplative Studies Fellowship (MLCSF) is seeking applicants who will bring fresh perspectives from the humanities into contemplative neuroscience and contemplative clinical science. These one-year professional fellowships worth $35 – $60K will be awarded to Assistant, Associate and full Professors (or equivalent rank) at their academic institution.

The Mind & Life Institute is a non-profit organization based in Boulder, CO that “seeks to understand the human mind and the benefits of contemplative practices through an integrated mode of knowing that combines first person knowledge from the world’s contemplative traditions with methods and findings from contemporary scientific inquiry”. Ultimately, their goal is to relieve human suffering and advance well-being.

The MLCSF grant program will have two complementary strands:

Strand one will focus on encouraging new kinds of scholarly reviews and critical analyses of recent scientific work, with the goals of raising new questions, improving methods, and drawing out broader implications of the scientific work. Projects in this strand can be formulated in terms of various fields or methodologies, including but not limited to religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology.

Strand two will focus on facilitating new kinds of active partnerships between humanistic scholars and laboratory scientists, with the goals of developing new interdisciplinary methods and a richer approach to the questions at hand. Funded projects will fall under one of three rubrics: Field-based projects, Laboratory-based projects, or Interdisciplinary team-based projects.

MLCSF recipients will be required to attend and possibly present at the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI), an annual week-long retreat that advances collaborative research among scientists based on dialogue and collaboration with contemplatives. The 2012 MLSRI will be devoted to the theme, “The Situated and Embodied Mind.”

The deadline for the fellowships has been extended to February 15. Read here for more information.