February 28th, 2010 Prizes

This project includes a competitive essay prize. This competition is aimed at providing incentives for scholars who work on our major themes to prepare essays related to their work that would be of interest to a non-academic audience and to publish those essays in venues of wide readership.

During the 2010-2013 academic years, scholars will be working on a wide range of scholarly projects that bear on the reality and nature of free will under the auspices of the Big Questions in Free Will Project. The Free Will Essay Prize will offer up to ten awards in the amount of $3,000 each for popular essays that present the state of the art or make new progress on our topics (see “Overview”). Essays must be at least 1,000 words in length and must be published in a popular, non-academic publication with a circulation of at least 12,000. Publications can be secular in orientation (e.g., Harper’s, Times Literary Supplement, The National Review) or religious (e.g., Christianity Today, First Things, Christian Century). Selected online publications will also be considered (e.g., Slate.com). Winning entries will be selected by a panel appointed by the project director, Alfred Mele.