by Sean Jurek
Professor of English Dr. Brett Bourbon recently stated that the humanities can be “prone to fashion and a concern for reputation” and that they are currently facing “a lack of agreement about what counts as useful, good, deep, worthy thinking.” In turn, he asserts, such disagreement can give rise to “isolation, incestuous ways of thinking.”
A new Institute located in Portugal will address what Bourbon terms “the weaknesses of the humanities” through a combination of individual research and discussion. The Gulbenkian Institute for Advanced Study (GIAS) counters these weaknesses by “generating not just new thoughts but a self-reflexive way of thinking about what we’re doing” through discussions with others.
Bourbon was recently appointed to the GIAS Advisory Board, and in that strategic role, he will advise the GIAS director and help determine the Institute’s cohorts of fellows. As the Institute’s website notes, the fellowship program allows “world-class scholars to conduct research of their own choosing…in a congenial intellectual environment, with few regular obligations.”
The GIAS was established in 2025 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a body which seeks to advance “the development of individuals and organisations, through art, science, education, and charity,” according to its website. Bourbon joins five others whom the Foundation’s executive board also appointed to choose fellows from among university faculty, independent scholars, practicing artists and other professionals in a variety of fields. Benefits of a GIAS fellowship include private workspaces, research tools and opportunities for discussion. These fellowships are meant to give their recipients “the time and the peace of mind that might help them in attaining the best possible developments of their own ideas, often through exchanges with similarly engaged scholars,” the GIAS website states.
Bourbon’s scholarly accomplishments and research experience gained at UDallas and Stanford University have prepared him well to serve on a board of this nature. He has published several books, most recently Organized Skepticism in the Age of Misinformation: Surviving the Kingdom of Gossip, which he coauthored with UDallas Associate Professor of Cybersecurity Dr. Renita Murimi.
While still a faculty member at Stanford University, Bourbon won a Fulbright award to visit the University of Lisbon, and he taught a seminar for one of that institution’s programs. Now he regularly works there as a visiting professor. In this capacity, he teaches two-week intensive graduate seminars for the Program in Literary Theory every other year. Bourbon’s previous seminars have focused on topics in analytic philosophy, epistemology and aesthetics.
This new appointment is yet another honor for a faculty member who has distinguished himself at UDallas, where he earned a Haggar Scholar Award at the beginning of this year. In giving other scholars the opportunity to develop their ideas through discussion with others, Bourbon hopes “to contribute in my small way to the protection, the development, and the future flourishing of the humanities.”
