Sadler Scholars
Sadler Scholars are a select group of doctoral students with research interests relevant to bioethics who are from racial and ethnic communities underrepresented in this field in the United States. Admission to this initiative of The Hastings Center’s visiting scholar program is by application; the application process for the 2023-24 cohort will open in early 2023.
Sadler Scholars have opportunities to present and receive critical feedback on their own work in progress from Hastings Center research scholars. They participate in professional development workshops with Hastings Center editors and invited experts, receiving guidance on writing for publication and on career opportunities in bioethics research and practice.
Stipends for Sadler Scholars are provided by the Blair and Georgia Sadler Fund for Socially Just Health Policy, which aims to cultivate a more diverse set of scholars committed to creating a more equitable world.
“The Sadler Scholars represent the next generation of bioethics: a field that is more diverse, widely interdisciplinary, and prepared to engage directly with how social inequality shapes human health and well-being,” said Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger, who directs the visiting scholar program and designed this initiative. “We are excited to welcome these colleagues into the Hastings Center community.”
2022-2023 Sadler Scholars
Leah Lomotey-Nakon, MEd, MTS
Degree Program: PhD, Social Ethics, Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University
she/her/hers
About me: I am a fifth-year social ethics PhD candidate in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University and biomedical ethics trainee at the VUMC Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society. My work explores organizational ethics in the health care industry through participatory research projects. I weave theories and methods from social ethics, community psychology, and digital humanities to empirically identify and investigate intercultural responses to social and structural inequities.
My research interests in bioethics: As a first-generation Ghanaian American raised at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina, I am particularly attentive to divergent interpersonal, institutional, and ideological responses to moral distress at the beginning and end of life. I am also curious about the ways in which West African ethics of care and virtue theories might contribute to the field of discourse.