EUGENE– The Rockefeller Foundation has awarded a four-year $250,000 humanities grant to the University of Oregon Center for the Study of Women in Society (CSWS).

The award, the first Rockefeller humanities grant ever awarded in Oregon, will support a research project titled "Ecological Conversations: Gender, Science, and the Sacred."

Irene Diamond, UO associate professor of political science, and CSWS Director Sandra Morgen are the principal investigators for the program that will bring to campus visiting scholars and grassroots activists from around the world.

The first year of the project will focus on contributions to the conversation from visiting scholars and activists. The focus of the second year, which will feature a conference, will be on the convergence of environmental and women’s movements around the globe. The following year will address questions of science and science policy and examine how environmental writers and activists understand science. The final year will weave together the previous themes in an effort to identify ways in which the integration of science and the sacred are practiced and understood.

The project was originally conceived and developed by Diamond and an interdisciplinary team of UO scholars who study gender and the environment.

Lynne Fessenden, a scientist who earned her doctorate in biological oceanography at Oregon State University, has been hired as the project manager.

"Our goal is to foster a series of dynamic conversations that move beyond environmental crisis rhetoric and explore vocabularies and practices that meet the environmental and spiritual challenges presently facing humanity," she says.

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