Historical Studies

*Update (01/14/22): David Nirenberg to become IAS Director on February 1, 2022

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed David Nirenberg as its 10th Director and Leon Levy Professor, effective July 1, 2022*. Currently dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago and professor of medieval history, Nirenberg will assume leadership of one of the world’s preeminent centers for theoretical research in the sciences and humanities.

Explore 1,000 years of world history in the exhibit Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads. The exhibit, co-curated by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Filiz Çakır Phillip, opens on October 9, 2021 and will run through February 27, 2022, at the Aga...

"It is sometimes called 'a scholar’s paradise' – the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton recently welcomed its latest group of 200 top-of-their field scholars from around the world. But despite all of the academics, one of the Institute’s most cherished and longstanding traditions is the 3 p.m. tea time. It is a chance for the members to mix and mingle and to bounce ideas off one another."

IAS and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA hosted an international forum on the antiquities discovered at Venizelos station in Thessaloniki, featuring Angelos Chaniotis and former Member Sharon Gerstel.

Watch the panel discussion here.

"Can we imagine, as Samuel Moyn puts it in 'Humane,' his smart and provocative new book, 'a future of war beyond killing'? It sounds like a worthy goal. Why wouldn’t less killing be anything but better?"

Read book critic Jennifer Szalai's review at the New York Times.

By Samuel Moyn, Member (2008–09) in the School of Historical Studies:

"In a speech on Tuesday, President Biden identified his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan with his desire to end the “forever war.” But he also promised that America will...

Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, with Chris Piuma, hosts The Spouter-Inn, a MegaphonicFM podcast that explores major works of literature from antiquity to modern times. Akbari and Piuma—avid readers with a...

Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has been awarded the 2020 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History for The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us...