Dear Colleagues:

It is with great sadness that I report that Dr. Ron Morstyn passed away last week in Sydney, Australia after a long bout with cancer.  Ron was an enthusiastic member of the Circle for several years.  He made important contributions to bringing Merleau-Ponty’s style of phenomenology to psychology and psychiatry.  And his personal contributions and always cheery presence at our meetings will be sorely missed.  Please keep his wife, Gaye, in your thoughts.

Dr. Duane H. Davis
UNC-Asheville

The Ron Morstyn Memorial Prize was established, through a generous donation from Gaye Morstyn, to honour Ron’s dedication to phenomenology and its potential for bettering our understanding of the human condition. It is awarded annually, to a graduate student, junior scholar, or independent scholar, for the best interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary paper engaging Merleau-Ponty’s work at the Circle. (To be eligible as a junior scholar, your PhD must have been earned within the last five calendar years.) The prize is presented as both an honor and a monetary award of $1000 USD.

If you are eligible for the prize and wish to be considered for it, indicate this in your cover letter when submitting your paper for consideration for the conference. Graduate students with interdisciplinary papers may ask to have their paper considered for both the Morstyn and Dillon prizes.