Mellon/ACLS Fellowship Awarded to Philosophy Professor

by Philosophy Department | August 23, 2010

Professor Tognazzini works mainly on free will and moral responsibility. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The American Council of Learned Societies have awarded a "Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship" to Neal Tognazzini, an assistant professor in the philosophy department. This fellowship is the second stage in the Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowship program, the first stage of which was a "Dissertation Completion Fellowship". Professor Tognazzini was awarded the Dissertation Completion Fellowship while he was a graduate student in the philosophy department at the University of California, Riverside, where he earned his PhD in 2009.

The Early Career Fellowship program attracts applicants from young scholars in the humanities and social sciences across the nation and is highly competitive: only 25 awards are given out each year. A complete list of award recipients, including pictures and brief biographies, is available on the ACLS website.

After completing his studies at UC Riverside, Professor Tognazzini joined the philosophy department at William & Mary in the Fall of 2009. His main areas of specialization are metaphysics and ethics, and most of his research thus far has been on problems surrounding human agency, free will, and moral responsibility.

The Recent Doctoral Recipients Fellowship comes with a stipend of $35,000 and will allow Professor Tognazzini to devote all his energy to research during the 2010-2011 academic year, during which time he hopes to work on a book manuscript exploring the nature of free will.