Natalia Marandiuc Selected as Templeton Fellow

DALLAS (SMU) – Dr. Natalia Marandiuc, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Perkins School of Theology, has been selected to participate in the New Visions in Theological Anthropology (NViTA) Templeton Grant as a recipient of a Fellowship in Science-Engaged Theology. Administered by the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, this £2.3 million grant in science-engaged theology from the John Templeton Foundation aims to facilitate greater collaboration between scientists and theologians.

Marandiuc is one of eleven scholars from the U.S., Canada, and Europe in the 2020 Cohort, which will gather through video links during the next months and at the University of St Andrews in 2021. The Fellowship enables the participants to collaborate with each other and with other experts on projects that draw on scientific research for work in theology. Marandiuc’s focus will be her next monograph, provisionally titled Love and Human Thriving: A Feminist Soteriology. She describes it as “employing feminist and womanist theology and theory in dialogue with neuroscience research and Christian existentialism to argue for a soteriology conceptualized as human wellbeing.”

“We’re delighted for the exciting opportunities this Fellowship presents for Dr. Marandiuc,” said Craig C. Hill, Dean of Perkins School of Theology. “When our faculty members collaborate with other scholars at the global level, that enriches the level of scholarship at Perkins.”

Marandiuc’s ongoing academic research has centered on feminist constructive and systematic theology, drawing on interdisciplinary sources in theology, religion, humanities, social sciences and neuroscience. The topic of love, both the love of God and love as a human experience, is a central thread in her research. She is the author of The Goodness of Home: Human and Divine Love and the Making of the Self (Oxford University Press, 2018), which received the 2018 Aldersgate Prize.