The Henry Luce Foundation has awarded the University of South Carolina $200,000 to fund a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship in environmental ethics. The Luce Environmental Ethics in Practice (LEEP) Fellowship is unique because fellows are embedded with practitioners at the University of South Carolina who are helping South Carolina communities plan and respond to environmental challenges. The LEEP Fellow will leverage this practical field experience to conduct research on neglected ethical topics. “Working directly with communities will provide the fellow with unique insight into the pressing day-to-day ethical issues that arise in environmental work, issues that can be overlooked by professional ethicists,” said Matt Kisner, the Principal Investigator on the grant and the chair of the Philosophy Department.

The fellowship follows the model of clinical fellowships in medical ethics, where ethicists are embedded in a professional medical setting, working alongside clinicians and health care professionals. This is the first time that this model has been applied to environmental ethics. The inaugural LEEP Fellow, Dustin Sigsbee, will work alongside community engagement professionals in the Arnold School of Public Health and the McCausland College of Arts and Science in coordinating recent environmental justice initiatives across South Carolina. Mr. Sigsbee’s training and research in ethics will allow him to support this work by providing ethical guidance, which includes determining best practices for community engagement on environmental issues, assisting in navigating value conflicts among stakeholders, and identifying forms of assistance that best promote democratic practices.

The LEEP Postdoctoral Fellowship is funded through the Henry Luce Foundation’s Democracy, Ethics, and Public Trust Initiative (DEPT). The initiative seeks to “reimagine and reinvigorate democratic culture and practices” by supporting citizens and communities “to participate more actively in priority-setting, policy development, and resource allocation.” The fellowship advances these goals by supporting communities as they plan responses to environmental challenges and by promoting relationships of trust among local organizations and governments, academics, and environmental stakeholders.

Professor Kisner hopes to see more fellowships like this in the future. “Widespread adoption of the embedded fellowship model could provide much needed support to communities while providing a critical perspective to ethical research and demonstrating the practical value of environmental ethics.” For further information on the LEEP Postdoctoral Fellowship, contact Dr. Matthew Kisner at kisner@mailbox.sc.edu or Dr. Dustin Sigsbee at dsigsbee@email.sc.edu.

The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to deepen knowledge and understanding in pursuit of a more democratic and just world. Established in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., the Luce Foundation advances its mission by nurturing knowledge communities and institutions, fostering dialogue across divides, enriching public discourse, amplifying diverse voices, and investing in leadership development.