Institute for Advanced Study at University of Minnesota

The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is one of seven University-wide centers at the University of Minnesota. According to its mission statement, the IAS "supports innovative research and creative activity across disciplines, facilitates collaboration, fosters critical engagement with issues and ideas, and builds generative relationships between the University and the larger communities locally and globally." It accomplishes this mission by providing fellowships and administrative support that encourage interdisciplinary and collaborative research and creative work across the University and beyond. The Institute is a member of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes and Humanities Without Walls.
Programming
The IAS describes itself as a resource for scholars, artists, professionals, and students who are engaged in a wide variety of study and practice. It also serves as a bridge between the University and the wider community as a place where people meet and ideas are exchanged. The IAS provides independent research support to faculty members and graduate student fellows, structural and funding support for interdisciplinary collaboration, and a host of other programs and opportunities for faculty, students, staff, and community members, such as workshops, forums, symposia, and conferences on a variety of subjects that lend themselves to interdisciplinary exploration. Most events are intended to appeal to a nonspecialist audience, and since 2008, most have been recorded and are freely available via the IAS website. The IAS serves as a catalyst for new work that otherwise may not have found a disciplinary home, such as the Moving Cell Project, a collaboration between choreographer Carl Flink, professor of theatre arts and dance at UMN and artistic director of dance ensemble Black Label Movement, and David Odde, professor of biomedical engineering at UMN. The Institute also serves as the home for recipients of UMN's Graduate School’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship and for recipients of external fellowships such as those provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The IAS has developed programs in several core areas: Public Programs, Interdisciplinary Initiatives, and Public Scholarship. Programs within those areas include Residential Fellows, Research and Creative Collaboratives, , IAS Thursdays, and more, including Open Rivers, Human in the Data, Thinking Spatially, and the Spotlight Series. The IAS' public programming was developed as a forum for speakers from within the University as well as visiting scholars, artists, and practitioners to showcase their research and creative work in an interdisciplinary and non-specialist space. The IAS has had participation from virtually every college and school on the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota and has had participation from every University of Minnesota system coordinate campus in one or more of its core programs.
In summer 2019, the IAS began an environmental humanities project called the Mellon Environmental Stewardship, Place, and Community Initiative (MESPAC), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. MESPAC is a three-year project bringing together faculty, staff, and students on the Twin Cities, Duluth, and Morris campuses of UMN as well as community partners. It seeks to expand the methods of the humanities and create greater intellectual diversity in the academy by incorporating local, community-based participatory research and Indigenous epistemologies into humanities scholarship and curricula.
Curriculum
The Institute has partnered with University departments and the University Honors Program to provide undergraduate and graduate curriculum on current events and topics related to IAS programs. In fall 2007, the Institute partnered with the College of Design to offer an undergraduate course on the I-35W Bridge collapse. In fall 2010, the Institute partnered with the College of Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts to offer an undergraduate course on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010; the course, entitled "Oil and Water: The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010," received national coverage in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and CNN. Since the 2018-2019 academic year the IAS partnered with the University Honors Program and Northrop to offer a lecture and performance series known as the Spotlight Series. Themes have included and Environmental Justice. The series has brought prominent speakers to campus, including Roger D. Launius, retired chief historian at NASA, Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and bestselling author of the book , and retired federal judge Nancy Gertner.
History
The IAS was established in 2005 as part of then-University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks' Initiative on Arts and Humanities and was "designed to promote and support distinguished, path-breaking research and creative work at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and social sciences." As such, the IAS was initially housed under the College of Liberal Arts. However, the mission, outreach, and collaborative work of the IAS almost immediately broadened to encompass all disciplines across the University. The IAS was publicly launched in September 2005. Its Founding Director was Ann Waltner, a professor of history. In 2008, the IAS moved for administrative purposes from the College of Liberal Arts to the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and officially became a University-wide interdisciplinary center. From 2005 to 2011, it was physically headquartered in the Nolte Center for Continuing Education. As of Fall 2013, it is headquartered in the revitalized Northrop Auditorium. Jennifer Gunn, a professor in the history of medicine, succeeded Waltner as director in 2014. The managing director of the IAS is Susannah Smith, a historian of Russia and modern Europe.
Notable past projects have included hosting five visiting faculty members from institutions in New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina during the 2005-2006 academic year. From 2006-2017, the IAS collaborated with The Bat of Minerva, a weekly regional cable television program, to publish video interviews of scholars and artists visiting or associated with the IAS. From 2008 to 2013, the IAS teamed up with the University of Minnesota Press on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Quadrant project, which brought in residential fellows in four research areas: Design, Architecture, and Culture; Environment, Culture, and Sustainability; Global Cultures; and Health and Society. The University of Minnesota Press published books in these four research areas in its Quadrant series.

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