Dr. Patty Van Cappellen and Dr. Erin Johnston led the 2024–2025 Bass Connections project, “What is Hope? Bridging the Gap between Experience and Research.” This interdisciplinary team brought together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates to explore hope as a lived human experience.

 

As part of Duke’s year-long Bass Connections program, the team tackled the complex question of what hope truly means—beyond theory or abstraction.

 

Understanding Hope

Hope is essential to resilience, flourishing, and religious life. Yet, its scientific study remains surprisingly limited, often constrained by definitions that are either too narrow or too vague. This project aimed to reshape how we think about hope by grounding it in people’s lived experiences and existential perspectives.

 

Listening to Lived Experience

Team members conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 to 60 individuals, gathering powerful personal stories of hope. These narratives came from people of diverse religious, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds—including faith leaders and community members. The result is a robust qualitative data repository that offers new insights into how hope is experienced and expressed in real life.

 

This work invites scholars, practitioners, and communities to rethink how we understand and foster hope in a complex world.