School of Historical Studies

In celebration of the appointment of Maria Hsiuya Loh to the School of Historical Studies Faculty, Visitor (2021–22) and Research Associate (2022) Abbey Ellis explores how Loh's work reshapes traditional views of a great Renaissance artist and grafts new stems onto the legacy of art historical scholarship at the Institute.

The research of Brad Bolman, Founders' Circle Member in the School of Historical Studies, focuses on the history of knowledge about organisms since the nineteenth century. "I study how scientists and other interested parties come to know what an organism is, whether it’s a beagle, a rose, or a truffle," he explains.

Art historian Marilyn Aronberg Lavin describes how three busts attributed to Baroque artist Gianlorenzo Bernini shaped the career of her husband Irving Lavin, past Professor in the School of Historical Studies, and how she recently repatriated one of these artworks to Italy from her home at IAS.

The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, Faculty (1956–74) in the School of Historical Studies, is the subject of a "clear-eyed, and compelling" biography written by Member (2009–10) and Director's Visitor (2011) Frank Costigliola.

Patrick Geary is co-PI of the European Research Council funded research project HistoGenes, which uses a combination of genomic, archaeological, anthropological, and historical methods to study over six-thousand burial sites in the Carpathian Basin between the fifth and tenth centuries.

In this Scholar Spotlight we feature Douglas Flowe who is a Member in the School of Historical Studies. He discusses his work on incarceration and the influences he had in life to follow this path.

Historian Jérémie Foa offers a very unique view of the 1572 massacres in his work entitled Tous ceux qui tombent: visages du massacre de la Saint–Barthélemy [All that fall: faces of the St. Bartholomew's day massacre]. He exhumes the “small lives” that were taken by reconstituting history in minute detail and honoring the names of the anonymous victims.

The Institute for Advanced Study came into being at the most inauspicious of times. Founded in the early years of the Great Depression, it took shape during the buildup to the Second World War and under the growing shadow of authoritarian regimes. Its first Director Abraham Flexner published his manifesto on the “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” in October 1939, barely a month after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. Surely this was a daunting moment to defend “the fearless and irresponsible thinker” and advocate for the free expression of knowledge and curiosity. 

In November 1954, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to a magazine in which he declared that, were he a young man again, he would not try to become a scientist: “I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree...

To Albert Einstein, she was “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.” More straightforward in his praise, Einstein’s fellow Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hermann...