I am proposing to spend two years at the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science (CHPS) at the Faculty of Philosophy of Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands). There, I propose to carry out a large research project and at the same time to acquire a number of new skills in the domains of teaching, editorship, organization and research methodology. I have good reasons for believing that my planned publications, together with my expanded curriculum, will allow me to compete successfully for a university position in Europe at the end of my fellowship. My research project, which will culminate in my third book-length monograph, aims to investigate the impact of Renaissance humanism on the development of natural philosophy (a traditional discipline that included physics, biology, astronomy, etc.) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, I shall investigate Renaissance and early modern ideas concerning the provenance of life and their link to notions of universal animation, of the ‘world soul’, and of celestial as well as divine causation. Although the history of this ‘cosmic dimension of the soul’ is not only a fascinating subject, but also very central to our understanding of early modern thought, it has been strangely neglected in the available scholarship. My proposed research topic requires an interdisciplinary approach, as it involves the histories of philosophy, of science, of theology and of medicine. The CHPS at Nijmegen is, in Europe, probably the best place for such a project, because of the presence of eminent historians of both philosophy and science in its staff. My proposed sojourn at the CHPS will combine the research just sketched with the acquisition of skills that are strictly related to my research.