Dr Teresa Bejan and Dr Janina Dill each awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize
The Department is extremely proud to announce that two of its academics have been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of their outstanding research and exceptionally promising futures.
The £100,000 prizes will further each academic’s cutting-edge research—in historical political thought, and international law and war respectively.
Dr Bejan’s prize
Associate Professor of Political Theory Dr Teresa Bejan will use her prize to support her editing of the two-volume Clarendon edition of John Locke’s Letters on Toleration.
This edition will be the first to bring all four of Locke’s texts together alongside a new translation of his Epistola de Tolerantia (1685), as well as several exciting new archival discoveries by colleagues.
The publication will enable non-specialists to appreciate the distinctiveness of Locke’s thinking.
‘I am honoured and immensely grateful for this award,’ said Dr Bejan.
‘The Prize funds will allow me to make major progress with the Clarendon edition of Locke’s Letters, while further cementing Oxford’s reputation as one of the best and most exciting places in the world to study historically informed political theory.’
Dr Dill’s prize
John G Winant Associate Professor of US Foreign Policy Dr Janina Dill will use the prize to conduct research on the moral psychology of war.
Her research will investigate how moral principles influence soldiers’ decision making in war and how they shape the attitudes of civilians affected by conflict. This work will help us understand how rules for the conduct of war, including the laws of war, must be articulated to be an instrument of morality.
Dr Dill said: ‘I am honoured and thrilled to receive this recognition and the means to pursue my research agenda on how moral principles can constrain conduct in war.
‘We need a better understanding of how human beings make decisions in the uniquely challenging context of armed conflict and to be able to articulate rules that effectively restrain their conduct.
‘To achieve this, I hope to create an interdisciplinary research programme that integrates insights and methods of moral psychology, legal theory, analytical just war theory, and political science.'
