The Civitas Dei Summer Fellowship
The Future of Personhood and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Dominican House of Studies & The Catholic University of America | Washington, D.C.
June 8-13, 2025
The Civitas Dei Summer Fellowship is a project sponsored by the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America and the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies that offers competitive fellowships for graduate students (and a few talented, upper-level undergraduates), drawing from across fields in the sciences, humanities, and law.
Fellowship recipients attend a one-week program in Washington, D.C., that offers courses and seminars given by distinguished scholars focusing on an aspect of Catholic thought in relation to culture and public life.
This year’s Civitas Dei fellowship examines “The Future of Personhood and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence”, drawing on patristic, scholastic, and contemporary perspectives to engage critical questions of personhood in light of AI. By participating in this fellowship, accepted students will be introduced to a wealth of scholarly resources on the nature of personhood, preparing them for robust and ongoing engagement in conversations on AI technology and its implications for philosophical anthropology and ethics.
Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates in all disciplines. Acceptance to the fellowship includes housing and meals for the duration of the program. Accepted students may also apply for travel funding.
The application deadline is Friday, March 14, 2025.
2025 Featured Speakers:
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Fr. James Dominic Brent, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Chaplain to Commuter Students at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC. He has articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Natural Theology, in the Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas on “God’s Knowledge and Will”, and an article forthcoming on “Thomas Aquinas” in the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology.
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Jordan Wales (Hillsdale College) is Associate Professor and John and Helen Kuczmarski Chair in Theology at Hillsdale College, where he teaches historical theology. His scholarship—appearing in journals such as Augustinian Studies, the Journal of Moral Theology, and AI & Society—focuses on early Christianity as well as theology and Artificial Intelligence. Holding degrees in Engineering (B.S.), Cognitive Science (M.Sc.), and Theology (Dip.Theol., M.T.S., Ph.D.), he is a member of the AI Research Group for the Centre for Digital Culture, under the Dicastery of Culture and Education at the Holy See; a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion; and a fellow of the Centre for Humanity and the Common Good.
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Fr. Anselm Ramelow, O.P. (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology), a native of Germany, teaches philosophy at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, where he is also currently the chair of the philosophy department. He is also a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and the Academy of Catholic Theology. He obtained his doctorate under Robert Spaemann in Munich on Leibniz and the Spanish Jesuits (Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997) and did theological work on George Lindbeck and the question of a Thomist philosophy and theology of language (Beyond Modernism? - George Lindbeck and the Linguistic Turn in Theology, Neuried: Ars Una 2005). Other works include Thomas Aquinas: De veritate Q. 21-24; Translation and Commentary (Hamburg: Meiner, 2013) and God: Reason and Reality (Basic Philosophical Concepts) (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2014), as editor and contributor. Articles appeared in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, Nova et Vetera, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly and Angelicum. Areas of research and teaching include Free Will, the History of Philosophy and Philosophical Aesthetics. He has worked on a philosophical approach to Miracles and other topics of the philosophy of religion, and more recently the philosophy of technology.
This event is in-person only. If you cannot make it to the fellowship, be sure to listen to the lecture recordings after they are published on the Thomistic Institute podcast.