Farr A. Curlin, M.D. is the Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities at Duke University, as well as the co-director of the university’s Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative. Before joining the Duke faculty in 2014, Dr. Curlin was Associate Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Program on Medicine and Religion at the University of Chicago. While at the University of Chicago, he was principal investigator on a project called “Mapping Religion-Associated Variations in Physicians’ Clinical Practices,” supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

He completed his internal medicine residency training and fellowships in both health services research and clinical ethics at the University of Chicago after graduating from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Curlin’s empirical research charts the influence of physicians’ moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians’ clinical practices. His normative work addresses questions regarding whether and how physicians’ religious commitments and practices should shape their practices of medicine in our plural democracy.

Dr. Curlin and colleagues have authored numerous manuscripts published in the medicine and bioethics literatures, including a New England Journal of Medicine paper titled, “Religion, Conscience and Controversial Clinical Practices.” He also edited a special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics titled, “Conscience and Clinical Practice: Medical Ethics in the Face of Moral Controversy.”