The Board of Directors is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2006 Kristeller-Popkin Travel Fellowships:

Crofton Black (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Oxford, England)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Gersonides: Epistemology and Exegesis

Black will examine Ms. Vat. Lat. 4273, Gersonides’ commentary on the Song of Songs, which was one of many Hebrew manuscripts that Pico had translated into Latin.  This manuscript contains many marginal notes by Pico.  This project grows out of Black’s dissertation, in which he argued that there are parallels between Gersonides’ concept of exegesis and Pico’s views expressed in the Heptaplus.

Benjamin D. Hill (University of Western Ontario)
The Medical Origins of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Hill postulates that Locke’s medical background informed the earliest stages of his epistemological project, which culminated in the Essay.  He will use the fellowship to study Locke’s manuscripts, held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, to search for evidence supporting this hypothesis.

Santiago Orrego Sanchez (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 

Sanchez will visit the Vatican Apostolic Library to study the manuscripts that will shed light on Suarez’s direct and indirect teachers at the University of Salamanca.  The rich, unpublished collection of manuscripts reveals the existence of a living tradition of philosophical discussion, knowledge of which often alters the interpretation of Suarez’s thought.