2025 marks 55 years since the first Fellows arrived at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.
IASH was founded in 1969 as the world's third Institute for Advanced Study, with an explicit commitment to fostering interdisciplinarity across the arts and humanities and building international scholarly networks – a radical vision for that time. It welcomed its first cohort of Fellows in 1970, with the 1,500th appointed in 2024. IASH is now far larger and more wide-ranging than its founders ever anticipated. As a community of practice of senior and early career scholars, it aims to build an inclusive research culture and bring the scholarship of its Fellows to a broad set of audiences both within and beyond the academy. It embraces the arts, law and the social sciences as well as the classical humanities, whilst continuing to welcome more than 60 scholars from across the globe each year.
The Institute is delighted to be holding a series of events to mark its 55th anniversary, the centre point of which will be a conference celebrating the remarkable scholarship emerging from the recently completed Institute Project on Decoloniality (IPD), on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 April 2025. The conference will take place over two days in person at the National Museum of Scotland and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, and online.
The event will feature a keynote address alongside contributions from other guests including Fellows present and past. A conference dinner and ceilidh will follow the first day’s proceedings, and the second day widens the scope of discussions to bring in local, national and international examples of the humanities in practice, as well as reflections on IASH’s own possible contributions in the future. Artistic interventions, from music to poetry, dance and film, will also be presented. The 2-day conference and dinner are free to attend for all Fellows and alumnae/i.
On Saturday 5 April, you can return to Hope Park Square for tea and cake, enjoy short talks on IASH's history, and take part in a range of optional events from city walks to private tours of some of Edinburgh's most famous buildings.
To register to attend in-person or online, please visit https://iash55.eventbrite.co.uk - information on hotel options and more detailed timetables can then be provided. All former and current Fellows can register for free.
Fellows in residence at IASH during IPD (between 2021 and 2024) can submit papers for the conference. The Call for Papers is available here (opens as PDF).