Initiatives
The Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics aims to expand our reach into new disciplines and communities. Read about our initiatives below and keep an eye out for new announcements.
The Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics focuses on expanding the study and practice of psychology beyond its traditional boundaries by integrating ethical, moral, and philosophical frameworks into clinical training and public discourse. Through a combination of university partnerships, interdisciplinary research funds, and public-facing multimedia platforms, the Center aims to foster character development, challenge societal norms, and cultivate a deeper humanistic responsibility within the field and broader community.
Awakening Psychology's Moral Imagination
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$4.3M Grant Will Establish Hub for the Psychological Humanities | Photo by Matthew Healey
The Awakening Psychology’s Moral Imagination project aims to transform the field of psychology by broadening the discipline to become more conversant in the ethical questions at the heart of the human condition. Led by Boston College’s Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics in partnership with the Kern Family Foundation, the project seeks to deepen access to the language of virtue character development, integrate the humanities into clinical training and practice, and cultivate dense networks of clinicians, faculty, and students across partner institutions. To achieve broad scale, the initiative will launch the Flourish multimedia platform, support a cohort of Kern Doctoral Fellows, establish a robust partnership with Harper's Magazine, and host high-visibility cultural events to invigorate the moral imagination of both practitioners and the public.
The Flourish Platform
Flourish is a multimedia home for the psychological humanities, a shared resource for anyone who wants to learn, teach, or practice in this tradition. In bringing this content to a wider audience, Flourish helps grow the psychological humanities movement.
Lily of Eire Art and Culture Festival
The annual Festival will be held at Manhattan's Sheen Center to unite artists, therapists, and scholars in reimagining psychological discourse. The three-day event features collaborative film, artistic, and musical presentations alongside continuing education units for attending practitioners.
International Art and Character Conferences
Held annually at different international locations, this annual gathering brings together scholars, practitioners, and artists to reimagine how art informs the cultivation of human character and potential.
Harper's Magazine Collaboration
Over the next three years, Harper's Magazine will run six pieces, “Psychological Humanities Essays," which are specially curated to speak to pressing concerns within our the psychological humanities community.
Fellows Program
Comprised of Psychological Humanities Fellows and Cultural Imagination Fellows, this robust community of scholars, practitioners, and cultural luminaries will help to forge the future of the psychological humanities movement.
Kern Doctoral Fellows
Designate scholarships for Kern Fellows within the Clinical Psychology PsyD program at Boston College. These fellowships will be for individuals dedicated to working on character-based research.
Core Team
Executive Director
Director of Academics and Operations
Director of Strategic Projects and External Relations
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Associate Director of Media and Technology
Assistant Director of Programming, Marketing, and Events
Assistant Director of Finance and Operations
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Graduate Assistant
Cura Psychologia: Cultivating a More Virtuous Psychological Science
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The Cura Psychologia Project aims to broaden the discipline of psychology toward a more unitive understanding of truth, expand psychology’s capacity to speak about character virtue development, and cultivate the moral, intellectual, and civic character qualities of those who participate in it.
Guiding Principles Document
Partnering Institutions
Research Contributions
“If our eyes are closed . . . psychotherapy is nothing more than an effective tool of the status quo. But if we can open our eyes, or rather lift them and see more of what is possible, we will be able to move toward a critical, subversive, and perhaps even occasionally constructive moral discourse.”
The Cushman Research and Educational Fund
Philip Cushman, a moral and political luminary in the field of psychology, died on August 22, 2022, the victim of a hit-and-run accident.
A beloved teacher, scholar, and clinician, Phil is remembered for his rich analysis of how the self has been conceptualized in the field of psychology, along with his historical and critical exploration of the moral and political horizons of psychotherapy.
With the establishment of this endowed Fund, created to honor Phil and foster his moral imagination for the field of psychology, we will continue this critically important work for generations to come.
About the Fund
Through Philip Cushman’s teaching, research, mentorship, and practice, he called for a rigorous interrogation of the relationship between our configurations of self and the socioeconomic and political realities which they frequently reflect and reinforce. He called for psychology to develop the capacity to more closely consider fundamental human questions of justice and morality in its descriptions of human identity and its treatments for psychological suffering. Phil’s passion for teaching had everything to do with his belief that future generations must receive the type of investment, care, and challenge which would enable them to rise above being “maintainers of the status quo.” For good to be done in this world, particularly through the field of psychology, we must be engaged in a multigenerational project that upsets the complacency of and complicity of this helping profession and calls it to a deeper and greater standard.
Dr. Galit Atlas to Visit in February 2027
On Friday, February 19, Dr. Galit Atlas will be giving a presentation, Come Closer: Wounds, Words, and the Psychoanalytic Process, that applies a psychoanalytic perspective to the link between childhood experiences and adult relationships. Dr. Atlas will examine how the dissociated child self-states manifest in one's later love life. People bring to their later relationships all the injuries they have survived, the unmet needs they have buried, the scars they have collected, and the solutions they have found. People's internal children often hold the wheel and drive their most important relationships. Atlas will discuss affect regulation, toxic nourishment, shame, aggression, loss, and therapeutic action.
Registration details to come!
2026 Student Fellows
“ The Philip Cushman Scholarship reflects the kind of psychology I hope to carry throughout my training: a willingness to look beyond traditional boundaries to better understand the person in front of us. ”
2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
“ (David Goodman's) stories of Dr. Cushman's kindness and unrelenting questioning of the status quo have been incredibly inspiring for me as I think through the kind of psychologist, mentor, advocate, and researcher that I would like to be. ”
“ I view character development, or the formative education of human capacities involved in 'living the good life,' as a social determinant of health and well-being. My research on human flourishing is motivated by an important gap between the humanities, social sciences, and public health, one that I believe can be addressed through multidisciplinary collaboration. ”
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2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
“ Cushman’s work gives expression to a conviction that has increasingly shaped my own academic path: psychology is never neutral in how it understands the human person. This scholarship supports my effort to pursue those questions without choosing between philosophy and psychology, but instead asking how each might challenge, complicate, and ultimately enrich the other. ”
“ I believe that psychology must fulfill its potential both in illuminating the human condition and in nurturing the philosophical dimensions of character. Serving as a Fellow further allows me to bring philosophical and psychological humanities perspectives into psychotherapy training by contributing to projects that foster relational virtue and human flourishing within graduate education. ”
2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2026 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
“ This scholarship helps me pursue the lines of research (mentioned in bio) in collaboration with several brilliant colleagues. ”
Philip Cushman Lecture Archive
Former Philip Cushman Student Scholars
2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2025 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
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2024 Philip Cushman Scholarship Recipient
Additional Information
In honor of Phil’s memory, the members of the Cushman family established the Philip Cushman Research and Educational Fund. Housed in the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics at Boston College, the Fund fosters the work to which Phil dedicated his life. Aiming at significant impact upon clinical training programs, academic departments, and the formation of a next generation of clinicians, the Fund supports academic scholarship and develops offerings which examine the moral, socioeconomic, and political questions at play within the field of psychology.
The goal of the Fund is to carry forward Phil’s commitment to theoretical, interdisciplinary, and moral inquiry through public facing offerings and student-oriented training programs. Several examples include the Center hosting an annual Philip Cushman Lecture, offering public lectures and workshops engaging areas of inquiry aligned with Phil’s aims, supporting students on an interdisciplinary research team dedicated to scholarship kindred to Phil’s work, and funding the dissemination of students’ research at conferences which are impactful upon the field of psychology. We anticipate these activities and offerings will reach a minimum of 8,000 students per year, carrying forward the concerns that Phil explored in his scholarship, teaching, and practice.
Justice and the Humanities Initiative
The Justice and the Humanities Initiative (JHI) supports and extends the work of the Boston College Prison Education Program by advancing research, dialogue, and public engagement at the intersection of justice, education, and the humanities. The Initiative fosters scholarship on incarceration, reentry, and college-in-prison; strengthens connections between the Prison Education Program and the Chestnut Hill campus; convenes impactful events; and advances efforts to sustain and expand this work.
As part of the Initiative’s launch, Patrick Conway, Ignacio Chair of the Boston College Prison Education Program, has been named the inaugural JHI Fellow in the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics. In this role, Dr. Conway brings together scholars, practitioners, and students for programming, research collaborations, and campus-wide conversations that examine questions of justice, education, and social transformation. JHI also creates graduate assistantship opportunities for students interested in education, justice, and policy. Through these efforts, the Initiative deepens the relationship between the humanities and justice, affirming the enduring transformative potential of higher education in prison.
Also as a part of the JHI, Sasha Smith has been given a graduate assistantship. Sarah is a doctoral candidate in the Higher Education PhD program at Boston College. Her research explores policies, pathways, and practices related to college access and opportunity for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students. Sasha holds an AA from Greenfield Community College, a BA in English from Amherst College, and an MEd from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also the proud owner of a GED, which she includes here as a reminder that there are an infinite number of pathways to and through college.
Finding the Story Behind Bars: Prison Writing and the Power of Narrative Change
An event with incarcerated journalist John J. Lennon and his publicist Megan Posco on the art of prison writing. Thursday, April 16th, 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. EST
Live Classical Music with Miki Sawada
Three performance held by classical pianist Miki Sawada, one MCI-Shirley, one at MCI-Framingham, and one on BC’s campus
Justice Related Publications
- "Beyond Recidivism: Exploring Formerly Incarcerated Student Perspectives on the Value of Higher Education in Prison"
Article by Marisa Lally and Patrick Filipe Conway, to be published in The Review of Higher Education, forthcoming.
- "Higher education in prison: a comparative policy analysis of five countries"
Article by Marisa Lally and Patrick Filipe Conway, published in Journal of Higher Education, 2025.
- "College Behind Bars: A Historiography of Higher Education in Prison"
Article by Patrick Filipe Conway and Marisa Lally, published in Journal of Education Policy, 2024.
- "Diplomas behind bars provide opportunities for rethinking incarceration."
Article by Patrick Filipe Conway, published in The Boston Globe, 2024.
Hosting Earth
The Hosting Earth initiative brings together a group of psychologically sophisticated thinkers to speak on the topic of the psyche’s relation to the earth and how we both consciously and unconsciously play guest and host to the world in which we live. From Marjolein Oele’s reflections on the dirt at our feet to Sean McGrath’s speculations on the future of our species, from James Morely’s humanistic ecology to Donna Orange’s unearthing of our most inhuman practices, from Ed Casey’s artistic hospitality to Matthew Clemente's aesthetical musings, these dialogues are rife with insight, openness, imagination, and hope.
2022-2023 Conference Highlights
Ecological Hospitality
Poetics of the Earth
Ecologies of Wisdom
Psychologies of Earth
Video Library
Hosting Art
Hosting Art with Diana Boros is an original online video series created and hosted by Diana Boros, which is supported by a joint venture of the Guestbook Project and the Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics at Boston College. Hosting Art employs the medium of dialogue to bring together the greatest minds making, promoting, theorizing about, and educating about, public and social practice art today.
Specifically, the series focuses on discussions about the transformative capacities of art-the ability of art to encourage critique and introspection-and accordingly, the value of art in society and democracy. It explores how artistic communication and collaboration can create and deepen ties between people and within communities, and how socially engaged, or social practice, projects can serve as vehicles for “hosting” interactions, dialogues, and relationships. This project aims to become a resource for all those interested in these ideas by creating a collection of conversations that each tackle different dimensions of the complex relationship between art and political life.
Diana Boros is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Political Theory at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a public liberal arts institution and the national public honors college. Previously, she worked for the United States Senate, as well as for several senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, and was also teaching professor of political science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick.
Video Library
Awakening Psychology's Moral Imagination
The Awakening Psychology’s Moral Imagination project aims to transform the field of psychology by broadening the discipline to become more conversant in the ethical questions at the heart of the human condition.
Cura Psychologia
The Cura Psychologia Project aims to broaden the discipline of psychology toward a more unitive understanding of truth and expand psychology’s capacity to speak about character virtue development.
The Cushman Research and Educational Fund
In honor of Phil's memory, the Fund supports academic scholarship and develops offerings which examine the moral, socioeconomic, and political questions at play within the field of psychology.
Justice and the Humanities Initiative
The JHI supports and extends the work of the BC Prison Education Program by advancing research, dialogue, and public engagement at the intersection of justice, education, and the humanities.
Hosting Earth
The Hosting Earth initiative brings together a group of psychologically sophisticated thinkers to speak on the topic of the psyche’s relation to the earth and how we consciously and unconsciously play guest and host to the world.
Hosting Art
Hosting Art employs the medium of dialogue to bring together the greatest minds making, promoting, theorizing about, and educating about, public ans social practice art today.