On Wednesday 8th July 2020, Professor James Arthur OBE was announced as the winner of the 4th Expanded Reason Award. The president of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation and the rector of Universidad Francisco de Vitoria acted as co-presidents of the International Judging Panel that selected Prof. James Arthur as the winner of this year’s Expanded Reason Award in the Teaching Category. The Award is given in recognition of innovation in academic programmes based on Benedict XVI’s proposal to broaden the horizons of reason. The Award is normally given at a ceremony in the Vatican, followed by an audience with Pope Francis.
Prof. Arthur receives the Award for an amalgam of projects, summarised under the title Teaching Character Virtues – A Neo-Aristotelian Approach, which captures the multiple teaching programmes initiated by James in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, at the University of Birmingham. These programmes range from the internationally-recognised A Framework for Character Education in Schools, to the world’s first distance-learning Master’s degree in character education. James has promoted a neo-Aristotelian approach to virtue and character formation and, with the Jubilee Centre’s staff, continues to undertake world-leading research in character and virtues that guides practice and informs policy.
The Jubilee Centre launched in May 2012 and will soon begin its fourth grant phase, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The research undertaken by the Jubilee Centre is summarised in the online exhibition The Jubilee Journey: Celebrating research into character and virtues.
More information about the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues can be found at https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/
