School Overview
The Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti hosts a select group of scholars for annual week-long schools investigating themes in science and religion. 
The school promotes science-and-religion scholarship of the highest quality.
The Venice School on Science and Religion intends to be a key venue for expanding and deepening the scholarship of promising graduate students and young scholars, while also guiding established scholars interested in contributing to some of the most important interdisciplinary conversations of our time.
The Venice School on Science and Religion awards scholarships to participants whose proposals are chosen as most relevant for the school’s discussion in a particular year.
Meet The Directors:
William Shea
William Shea holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and was a Fellow of Harvard University. He taught at McGill University in Montreal before becoming Galileo Professor of History of Science at the University of Padua in 2003. He is the author, co-author or editor of 25 books and over 150 scholarly articles that have appeared in 10 languages. He has written extensively on the Scientific Revolution and on the relations between Galileo and the Church. Among his recent publications are two books co-authored with Mariano Artigas: Galileo in Rome (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Galileo Observed. Science and the Politics of Belief (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2006).
Karl Giberson
Karl Giberson is director of the Forum on Faith and Science at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. Formerly the editor of both Science & Spirit and Science & Theology News, he is a leading figure in the field of science & religion. He was the director of the Erice Summer Program in science & religion, and in collaboration with William Shea, organized the first workshop there in the summer of 2003. Giberson is the author of four books, Worlds Apart: The Unholy War Between Religion and Science, Species of Origin: America's Search for a Creation Story (with Donald Yerxa), Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists Versus God and Religion (with Marino Artigas), and Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. Giberson is a contributing editor for Books & Culture where his essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared frequently over the past several years. He has also published a number of scientific papers on atomic physics.
Thomas Jay Oord
Thomas Jay Oord is professor of theology and philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho. He is theologian for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love and President of the Wesleyan Theological Society. Among the books that he has written or edited, the most recent are The Altruism Reader: Science, Theology and Love, The Science of Love: The Wisdom of Well-Being (Templeton), Relational Holiness (Beacon Hill), and The Many Facets of Love: Philosophical Explorations (Cambridge). Oord’s essays have appeared in dozens of scholarly journals, magazines, and books.
Donald A. Yerxa
Donald A. Yerxa is assistant director of The Historical Society, a professional society located at Boston University. Yerxa serves as the editor of Historically Speaking, a unique historical publication that features prominent historians writing for nonspecialists. Yerxa has written two scholarly history books on Anglo-American naval history and has co-authored with Karl Giberson, Species of Origins: America’s Search for a Creation Story (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). He has written/conducted scores of articles, essays, reviews, and interviews for several publications and serves as a contributing editor for Books & Culture and on the editorial committee of New Global Studies.
Jill Jones
Jill Jones handles all of the administrative tasks of The Venice Summer School on Science & Religion. She also works as Dr. Oord's personal assistant.
Program and Themes
Three prominent science-and-religion scholars will lecture each year to the entire school on a topic related to the year’s theme. Invited scholars and participants will analyze and discuss these lectures as well as related published work. Participants will be assigned to a week-long afternoon workshop led by one of the prominent scholars. In these workshops, participants will present abbreviated versions of their pre-circulated scholarship-winning papers for commentary and critique by the invited experts and other students.
- Year One: God & The Laws of Nature
Lecturers: Paul Davies, Owen Gingerich, John Polkinghorne - Year Two: Evolution & Human Uniqueness
Lecturers: Frans De Waal, Karl Giberson, Simon Conway Morris, Michael Ruse, Józef Zycinski - Year Three: Evolutionary Psychology & Values (tentative title)
Lecturers: To Be Announced