School of Bioethics – Wishbook

Every year, our prestigious faculty attracts students from all around the world. The most talented of our students are young people often committed in pursuing an academic career or previously established professionals who have left their careers to further their studies in bioethics.

All of them felt the call to be protagonists in the Culture of Life. Our international PhD program is set up to encourage international and multiethnic involvement in the study and research of bioethics by facilitating students coming from developing nations as well. This fund is set up to provide help to students who would otherwise be unable to study in Rome. In this way, the best and most capable students would receive a solid education in bioethics and have a significant impact in the field upon return to their native land. The scholarship covers academic fees, a monthly salary and a fund for participating to international conferences and purchasing essays and books. Everyone interested in this project may specify from which continent or country they would like to support 5 PhD students.

Duration: 3 years

Total cost for 5 PhD scholarships: € 380,500 (€ 76,100 each scholarship)

Our school has spearheaded the foundation of an investigative bioethics journal, that launched in Italian in 2008. The journal is scientific and quasi-monographic in that each number makes reference to a specific point in actual debate. Our school wants to translate the journal’s 28 back-issues to English and start a multilingual journal, making it openly accessible, multicultural and interdisciplinary, thus allowing for a wider impact as well as engaging research on the cutting edge of science, philosophy, theology, religion, and law.

Duration: 5 years

Total cost: € 393,000

• To translate first 28 issues: € 107,000.
• To support the research, multilingual redaction, printing and mailing of this journal: € 57,200 per year

Our goal is to build one of the world’s most comprehensive multilingual bioethics libraries. Our library already hosts an ample collection of philosophical andtheological works for reference. However, since the establishment of the School of Bioethics and the veritable explosion of publications over the past thirty years, we face a twofold challenge: maintaining our collection of all the most important and recent works in all the major languages, and building our stock of past and classic works, particularly from the decades of the late seventies to the present.

The broadening of our library’s collection has a direct impact on the international placement of our Faculty, thus strengthening our academic prestige. Given its costly and time-consuming nature, it is all the more imperative that the work is carried out immediately. The collection will be completed over a 3-year period.

Duration: 3 years

Total cost: € 400,000

Every year we organize the International Summer Course in Bioethics, aimed to offer a greater understanding of bioethics principles and different bioethical issues. In this two-week program we offer an introduction to personalistic bioethics and, during the second week, an academic specialization on groundbreaking issues. As bioethics school we are engaged in spreading the personalistic framework and in proving the limitations of utilitarian conception of many currents existing in bioethics. We are convinced that an intensive training here in Rome, within our school, represents a valuable opportunity for students, scholars and professionals to open-up their horizons, facilitating their comprehension of personalistic bioethics.

We ask benefactors and philanthropists to help us internationalize our program and establish at least 15 scholarships for the most prominent and talented candidates from outside Europe, so as to trigger a multiplier effect which can disseminate personalistic values.

Total cost: € 35,000 (€ 2,333 each scholarship)

The Institute, operating the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights, offers a university framework of reflection and study, providing information and fostering the application of bioethical principles in the fields of science, medicine and new technologies based on the UNESCO Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. Our Institute encourages a wide exchange of ideas and experiences among scholars, professionals, religious and lay people through dialogue among international institutions of higher education especially with developing countries: we intend to hold two major events involving European and international leaders in the field of bioethics with the aim of addressing the following two topics of uttermost priority in their agendas.