Flourishing Fellows

For more information, email Kate Jackson-Meyer at kjacksonmeyer@fas.harvard.edu

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The Flourishing Fellows Program

Led by Jonathan Teubner and Kate Jackson-Meyer, the program invites Harvard undergraduates into the work of the Human Flourishing Program through small, semester-long reading groups. Fellows gather alongside program researchers over short, important texts to discuss some of the big questions our research touches on: love, forgiveness, friendship, technology, faith, and what it means to live a good life.

Each semester, the Human Flourishing Program offers a slate of reading groups led by faculty and program staff. Groups typically meet three to five times over the course of the semester at our offices in Cambridge. Reading commitments are intentionally modest—a workbook, a novel, a few essays—so that the conversation in the room, not the volume of pre-reading, carries the meeting.

There is no application beyond a sign-up form, and there is no cost. Fellows simply commit to showing up and to reading the materials for the groups they join.

A path to the Oxford Vivarium

Participation in a reading group is also the prerequisite for joining the Human Flourishing Program at the Oxford Vivarium each August—a week of seminars, conversation, and community in Oxford with students and scholars from across the program.

Upcoming reading groups

Fall 2026:

Love Reading Group

This reading group will explore love through passages from authors such as Bryan Stevenson, Greg Boyle, and Rev Liz Walker, as well as through engaging activities and reflections that invite students to think of ways to share love in their lives. 

Spring 2027:

Forgiveness Reading Group

This reading group invites students to work through the evidence-based REACH Forgiveness Workbook, a workbook of educational, reflective, and embodied exercises. Students will meet to discuss the experience of working through the workbook. 

Recent reading groups

The groups change each semester, shaped by what faculty are working on and what students are eager to discuss. Recent offerings have included:

• Forgiveness. Working through the evidence-based REACH Forgiveness Workbook alongside the latest empirical research on how forgiveness shapes mental health and flourishing.

  
  

• AI and Social Flourishing. Reading and discussing how social AI is reshaping four central places of human life: family, friendship, work, and religion.

  
  

• Till We Have Faces. A close reading of C. S. Lewis's last novel that delves into issues such as love, self-understanding, and the hiddenness of the divine.

  
  

• Confessions (“Just Show Up” Reading Group). Listening to Augustine's Confessions together over a weekly meal.